zip files with greek characters not matched

Melophage wrote:

the filenames are indeed in code page 737 (your first example is “ΕΡΓΑΣΙΕΣ/περιεχόμενα.doc”), but because the .zip archive does not contain extended language encoding data fields to advise unarchivers of the filenames being in code page 737, unarchivers are (properly) treating the filenames as if they were in code page 437.

I think Mac unarchivers do not use 437 but MacRoman, which is different.

Do you know if modern zip archivers do this right? Ideally they should always use utf-8 for filenames instead of ancient dos codepages.

Tom,

for UTF-8 filenames, a .zip archiver has to set a particular bit in a particular structure which is associated with the filename in the archive; if that bit is not set, then the filenames should be in code page 437. Having filenames in character sets other than UTF-8 or code page 437 is possible, but would depend upon a different internal structure which is implementation-dependent (and thus not universal). If Mac unarchivers default to MacRoman, then unless they’re using that latter method, they’re not behaving correctly. (I was using the command-line Info-Zip unzip program on my Mac, which correctly translated the filenames in Nik_GR_Mac’s archive to code page 437.)

Melophage wrote:

(I was using the command-line Info-Zip unzip program on my Mac, which correctly translated the filenames in Nik_GR_Mac’s archive to code page 437.)

Interesting! So what you saw as the first letter of περιεχόμενα was not the ß which I got but instead a ° ?

It just seems that in 2014 the standard zip archiving/unarchiving apps ought to be able to handle non-latin filenames without encoding them by default into latin.

Tom,

the intended π was encoded in the .zip archive as an A7 byte, which is º (the masculine ordinal indicator, U+00BA) in code page 437 rather than ° (the degree sign, U+00B0).

The likeliest explanation is that that archive was created from files on a FAT filesystem using a 1990s DOS version of PKZIP on a computer which defaults to code page 737.

Melophage wrote:

The likeliest explanation is that that archive was created from files on a FAT filesystem using a 1990s DOS version of PKZIP on a computer which defaults to code page 737.

The OP said he made it on Win 7, so I guess that still uses the old archiver.

You are correct of course about the BA, I typed in the wrong character.

Nik_GR_Mac wrote:

Closing i would like to mention that when i created a new test zip file using win rar program in PC WINDOWS 7 was unziped correctly on MAC using the win zip program for MAC in contrast with the default OS X application which continues to create mismacth to non latin character!

Is there some way you can get the file you are really interested in rezipped using win rar? Or download it unzipped?

Could you use the camera icon here to post a screen shot of what the file you are really interested in looks like after unzipping?

Presumably your main problem is knowing what the file names are, right? If we know the encoding was botched, we can probably tell you how to translate the file names and you can change them.

Nik_GR_Mac wrote:

unfortunately these files are downloaded unzipped without knowing what kind of encoding carry.

But we do know the encoding, because zip should normally always botch it the same way as with your test. If you will copy/paste the name of one of the files here, we should be able to tell you what the Greek is.

You are not the only one with problems with zip and non-latin file names. Various versions of zip are very old or poorly made and can't do it right.

Nik_GR_Mac,

the problem is not with your Mac; the problem is with the .zip archiving program which created the 100 MB .zip archive. That program isn’t recording the filenames in a way that will allow the filenames to be extracted as intended by any correctly functioning .zip extraction program.

My suggested solution was addressed to you above, but it’s in a reply to Tom: if you can use a Windows .zip extraction program to extract the files onto a NTFS filesystem, and the filenames look correct when shown in a Windows program (that is, don’t use a command-line program; use something like Windows Explorer, or whatever the Finder analogue in Windows 7 is), then use a Windows .zip archiving program (again, not a command-line program) to create a new .zip archive from the files on the NTFS filesystem, and then try extracting the files from the new .zip archive onto your MacBook Pro, to see if the new .zip archive recorded the filenames correctly.

Was the test .zip archive which you’d created using WinRAR the 100 MB file which you’d made available for download? If so, then it did not create the .zip archive correctly — the 100 MB file does not have correctly recorded filenames in it.

Nik_GR_Mac wrote:

i experienced the bug regarding non latin filename mismacthing...

Why can't you copy/paste the mismatched filename here as I asked you before so we can see it and tell you what it is supposed to read? That might help us find a fix for you.

Nik_GR_Mac wrote:

the file name upon the unzip: íÑëí ÄàíÜëÜ ãÑ ÄêïÑàÄ + 2

That is just ΤΕΣΤ ΑΙΤΗΣΗ ΜΕ ΑΡΧΕΙΑ

encoded in cp 737 encoding and read in MacRoman encoding. So you can just change the name to that.

Are there some file names you do not already know? If so, I can tell you how to turn them into Greek.