Bug: Non-english char filenames

[moo]

Archive filenames with non-english characters seem to be refused to open in the latest version of P.A. Earlier versions worked fine with foreign language filenames.

I’m using Windows XP if this is in dispute elsewhere (PA 9.02.01)

• Joel

[ivan]

Hello!

Can you give us more information.

1. Which is the archive format you are having problems with? Can you please try renaming some other format (if it is ZIP, then to e.g. CAB or 7-ZIP) to same archive filename, and then try opening.

2. Does this happned from main PA or from shell extensions? Try both of them.

3. What is your country? Does this filename contains only local country letters or UNICODE letters?

4. Can you create 7-ZIP file and add some smallest archive with this filename to it and then send it to us so we can check. 7-ZIP will save filename even if it is UNICODE so we can check it on our machines.

[moo]

My locale is Australia and default language is English. The characters in filenames that are causing problems are Hebrew characters on a FAT32 system, although the same problem occurs in NTFS. I presume this is a strange problem, considering that you provide a Malaysian version, etc.

From what I have tested:

a) The characters show as ? even in a right-click popup menu.

b) Note that below problems are independent of whether I open from explorer or by File->Open in PA. Archives that open ordinarily with only roman letters in the filename do the following:

• ZIP, 7Z, BH, LZH: open showing an empty archive
• RAR: PA cannot open message
• TGZ: “Error in TAR/GZIP file structure” -> PA cannot open message
• PAE (Rijndale): “‘4294967295’ is not a valid integer value.” -> empty archive

With your question: from main PA or shell extensions did you mean what I answered in (a)?

I previously used PA 2001 which my University introduced me to and I don’t remember these problems, but I may have not been using such filenames; now when I reinstall PA 2001, I get the same problems, but I don’t know if there would have been common DLL’s that reinstalling 2001 would have kept from the newer version so I don’t know if the test was fair.

Note that PA similarly doesn’t let me make archives with these unicode characters, simply because it doesn’t recognise it as a valid file, but it also doesn’t do anything logical to stop it, it just gives messages of confusion. Adding files with foreign characters sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t… I haven’t yet worked out the context.

To illustrate, attached is an archive test.7z, containing a aש.7z which contains a שדכחך.txt, although this is not shown when the archive aש.7z is opened.

I hope this helps (since it took time to experiment!)

• Joel
  attachment_p_1175_0_test.7z

[ivan]

Hello!

The archive filename contains UNICODE character. PowerArchiver doesn’t support archives with UNICODE characters right now - planned for 9.5. This limitation was also in ALL previous versions.

But, adding “those” files with UNICODE filenames is POSSIBLE. You can use 7-ZIP to add/extract archives with those filenames INSIDE, but only from main PA window (not shell extensions). Also extracting RAR archives with those filenames inside works fine.

Other formats (ZIP, CAB, …) DO NOT support adding/extracting UNICODE filenames. This is general ZIP specification problem - no program can do it right now.

So, please make sure all archive filenames are without UNICODE chars, but if need to compress those files, use 7-ZIP format which supports UNICODE filenames.

[moo]

Hi, sorry, I hadn’t realised this was known to be unsupported. I mostly receive non-English filenames, so I just have to rename them, or not use PowerArchiver for now…

Other formats (ZIP, CAB, …) DO NOT support adding/extracting UNICODE filenames. This is general ZIP specification problem - no program can do it right now.

I’ve actually managed to extract RAR and maybe ZIP files with PowerArchiver that contained Unicode files, and it worked perfectly. I can’t test right now as I’m not in windows…

• Joel

[ivan]

No, you just have to use 7-ZIP format and non-unicode name for archive and you CAN add/extract/open/delete all the unicode files inside.

There is no ZIP utility that supports unicode filenames. There are just few archive utilities that support unicode filenames, but PowerArchiver supports in INSIDE 7-ZIP archives (not ZIP or CAB) completely.

[spwolf]

You might be confused by seeing the Hebrew letters and thinking they were written in Unicode - Unicode is “just” an encoding standard for letters. You could have those same letters in several different encoding codesets and yet it wouldnt be the Unicode.

Due to limitations of old zip format, unicode is not supported so when you had support for Hebrew characters in zip, it was probably some other codeset and not unicode.

Only modern formats like 7zip and RAR support unicode because they were newer and they had built in unicode support. So basically, please use 7zip when you have to compress something with Unicode letters.

thanks!

[TBGBe]

There still seems to be a problem though.
Using PA to open the test.7z file that moo provided,

I cannot read Hebrew, so I apologise but:-

Open test.7z
PA shows that there is another 7z file inside:- a{HebrewChar}.7z
Trying to open this (with double click inside PA window), nothing is shown - the file appears empty!

However, using 7-zip File Manager (beta 4.09) I can see that
a{HebrewChar}.7z contains another single file {Hebrew}.txt

So it seems PA does not open the 7z file with these Unicode(?) characters in the Filename :confused:

[moo]

@TBGBe:

So it seems PA does not open the 7z file with these Unicode(?) characters in the Filename :confused:

That’s why Ivan wrote:
@ivan:

No, you just have to use 7-ZIP format and non-unicode name for archive and you CAN add/extract/open/delete all the unicode files inside.

• Joel

[TBGBe]

Yes but Spwolf said:

Only modern formats like 7zip and RAR support unicode because they were newer and they had built in unicode support. So basically, please use 7zip when you have to compress something with Unicode letters.

I was saying that PA support for 7zip format doesn’t support Unicode {yet}.

So I think the current situation is that the filenames (to be archived) may use Unicode characters BUT the actual Archive filenames can not - is that right ?

P.S. Does PA support for RAR work with Unicode characters in Archive filenames ?

[spwolf]

Terry - PA does not support archive filename in Unicode - this is PA-wide limitation.
Inside of archive, you can have Unicode filenames in formats that support them (7zip and RAR).

[TBGBe]

@spwolf:

Terry - PA does not support archive filename in Unicode - this is PA-wide limitation.

OK thanks - got it now - ;)