Re: Copying files with special characters

[Sheldon Gill]

Andreas Höschler wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I would like to programmatically copy files with
>
>    system([[NSString stringWithFormat:@"cp -r %@ %@", sourcePath, 
> destPath] cString]);
>
> or alternatively using NSFileManager. This works as long as sourcePath 
> does not contain special characters like ä,ö,ü,...
>
> In a terminal shell I can successfully copy such a file by typing
>
>     cp "Germ
>
> and then using TAB to automatically complete the path to
>
>     cp "German Fa\314\210hrhaus.jpeg" /home/ahoesch/A00
>
> The question for me now is where this magic \314\210 stuff comes from 
> and how I can do the conversion in my GNUstep app programmatically 
> before building the copy command.
That's your shell auto-completion routine returning the appropriate 
codes for the character(s).  What locale are you using?

I'd have guessed your file name is Fährhaus (aber mein deutsch ist 
schlect) in which case

Decomposed UTF8 should have the following character as U+00A8 
(Diaeresis) if I'm not mistaken.
Precomposed UTF8 should not have the 'a' but simply the character U+00E4 
(Latin small A with diaeresis)

but your shell completion is returning two characters which I can't make 
sense of.

>    system([[NSString stringWithFormat:@"cp -r %@ %@", [sourcePath 
> magicMethod], destPath] cString]);
>
> Hints are greatly appreciated!

I think the correct *step way would be:

 BOOL did_copy;
 NSString sourcePath = @"German Fährhaus.jpeg";
 NSString destPath = [[NSHomeDirectory()] stringByAppendingPathComponent: 
@"A00"];
 NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];

 if ([fileManager fileExistsAtPath: sourcePath])
 {
     did_copy = [fileManager copyPath:sourcePath
                               toPath:destPath
                              handler:nil];
 }


If this doesn't work on your system, please file a bug as it should work 
everywhere GNUstep does.  That said, it would appear to be a problem 
with your OS/locale combination.

On a modern *nix you should be able to get away with:

 system([[NSString stringWithFormat:@"cp -r %@ %@", [sourcePath UTF8String], 
[destPath UTF8String]]);


but I wouldn't recommend going down that route. The file manager methods 
should do the right thing.


Regards,
Sheldon



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