FTP upload unicode files

[tv monkey]

I can't seem to ftp upload files with Unicode characters in filenames. eg. japanese and chinese.

When i upload the files i get:

Failed to convert command to 8 bit charset

Does anyone have this problem?

[TheCoder]

Try using binary mode transmission - this should send the file without trying to do any character set conversion.

Filenames etc will almost certainly require to be in Ascii (non unicode) format as the protocol doesn't normally support anything else.

[tv monkey]

I use binary mode in filezilla and still face the same problem.

I use another FTP client such as WinScp and it converts everything with unicode to ?????.

Really strange..

[TheCoder]

Something seriously wrong somewhere then - binary mode is for transferring executables etc where a single bit change could cause failure. As far as binary mode is concerned, there is no such thing as unicode - its simply a binary datastream with no conversions allowed !

Any filenames still need to be in a non unicode format. FTP doesn't usually cater for unicode filenames, mostly because you have no idea what kind of system your transfering the file to.

[tv monkey]

exactly! well.. I will look into it when i have more time. vsftpd config?

For now, i have to rename all such files in order to upload.

[TheCoder]

If its only filenames giving you a problem then thats normal. As I said, ftp doesn't normally support anything but standard numeric ascii (7 bit) character codes in the filename. Its done that way so it works on systems that have no concept of unicode filesystems.

I suggest that before you upload files with unicode filenames that you stick them in a zip/rar file that has an old dos type ascii 8.3 filename and then upload that. It will also have the benefit of compressing the files so transfer occurs quicker.