Subject: Re: Weird filename encoding issue

From: Johannes Sixt <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:55:24 +0200

Alexander Gladysh schrieb:
> 3. Clone repo to OS X machine and see the weird behaviour. Git status
> can't decide how file should be named, "%CA%EE%EF%E8%FF.txt" or
> "\312\356\357\350\377.txt".

It's not 'git status' that cannot decide how to name the file. It's OS X.

> $ git status
> # On branch master
> # Untracked files:
> #   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
> #
> #	%CA%EE%EF%E8%FF.txt
> nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
> $ ls
> %CA%EE%EF%E8%FF.txt

git asked OS X:

   Does the file "\312\356\357\350\377.txt" exist?

and OS X said: "Yes". Because otherwise, you would have seen the file
listed as "deleted:" in the 'git status' call above.

But then git also requested a file listing from OS X in order to list the
untracked files. And now OS X returned the name "%CA%EE%EF%E8%FF.txt". How
could you expect git to tell that this is the same file when OS X cannot
decide how to name it?

The solution: Do not use file names with some local (let alone Windows
specific) encoding if you have to use the files on OS X, too.

-- Hannes