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I've got many files which came from windows zipped file. The files has accents in names like:

"partyku?y no.doc" (this is the string displayed in linux terminal)

How to unpack or maybe rename with correct chars?


Firstly i extract zip in 'win xp'.. result:

garbage in names

Next step, unzip in 'win 7'.. result:

perfect names.

So I downloaded 7z for windows and compressed as 7z and as a zip (both with 7z)

Then put files to linux and extract it with '7z x ..' on files..

7z spits correct names but .zip not.

I was lucky to have an access to 'win 7', what if not? Replacing chars like rody_o suggest?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Jul 11 '12 at 20:59

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And you're sure it's the filenames, and not, e.g., that your terminal font doesn't have good UTF-8 support? The names also look like that, e.g., on desktop or in a file browser window? –  user139706 Jul 11 '12 at 14:16
I checked it and it's not only terminal. –  xliiv Jul 11 '12 at 14:24

3 Answers 3

Figure out which encoding the filenames are in and use convmv to rename them.

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I used it but it told the files are utf8 already and they still wasn't well displayed. –  xliiv Jul 11 '12 at 14:08
There is a difference between the encoding of the files' names and the encoding of the files' contents. Most likely your terminal is UTF-8, so if the filenames aren't correctly displayed, they are not UTF-8. So that means that you should double-check that you have correctly used convmv –  Jo So Jul 11 '12 at 15:19

I suspect the real question here is "how do I transfer files using zip without corrupting non-ASCII filenames?". If this is the real problem that you are trying to solve, try using the "-UN=UTF8" command-line option to zip when you create the archive. This will force zip to store filenames using UTF-8, which should preserve non-ASCII characters.

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What if someone else creates zip? 'Someone else' who is limited to mastered only windows zip? Is there any chance to uncompress it on linux AND have good names? :) –  xliiv Jul 11 '12 at 17:23
If the zip is created without UTF-8 support enabled, then the filenames will be corrupted when they are stored in the file. You can't recover them later, as the original name is not stored anywhere. This is a classic problem with the zip format, see linux.die.net/man/1/zip for a more thorough description. If you are limited to the version of zip that is built into Windows, I recommend sticking to ASCII filenames only. –  bta Jul 11 '12 at 18:01

Well, if you're sure that really is the filename and not some encoding conflict, then you can bulk-rename such files with

rename s/REGEX/REPLACEMENT/ *.doc

or, a slightly more aesthetic way,

rename s,REGEX,REPLACEMENT, *.doc

in which case you don't need to escape things like ?.

REGEX and REPLACEMENT are regular expressions -- rename is basically sed for file renaming.

When bulk-renaming with rename, it's always a good idea to run rename with the -n option before doing the actual renaming. This option means "dry-run", so just print what would be done if the -n were removed.

Be sure to read man rename and/or man sed before experimenting.

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