How do I convert Windows 7 file-name encoding to UTF-8 for Ruby on Rails?

Question

Hi

(Ive looked at the other questions - none seemed to quite fit my problem.)

I have some file-names under Windows 7 that need to be translated in to MySQL database (UTF-8) with Ruby on Rails.

An example file-name includes "íéó" in some kind of Windows 7 file-system encoding.

Ive tried many combinations of gsub and ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Chars.

Thanks for the help

Answer 1

If you use Notepad++ you have the option of converting a file. http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net

It is under the menu item: encoding.

Answer 2

I've been using Windows for many years now, since Windows 3.1 and Windows NT 4.0, but I still don't fully understand how Windows handles filename encodings. And I have been using MRI and YARV on Windows for several years and I still don't understand how they handle filename encodings on Windows.

What I do know is that there are some problems with Unicode filenames on Windows that will be fixed in 1.9.2. However, I don't know whether that actually is the problem that you are hitting or if there is just a plain bug in your code.

Answer 3

Have you tried calling WideCharacterToMultiByte specifying CP_UTF8? That's the normal way of converting from UCS2 to UTF8 on Windows.