Re: OS X and umlauts in file names

From: Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>
Date: Nov 23, 2009, 17:45 UTC
Message-ID: <200911231845.04325.trast@student.ethz.ch>
In-Reply-To: <4B0ABA42.1060103@syntevo.com>

Thomas Singer wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> I'm on an English OS X 10.6.2 and I created a sample file with umlauts in
> its name (Überlänge.txt). When I try to stage the file in the terminal, I
> can't complete the file name by typing the Ü and hitting the tab key, but I
> can complete it by typing an U and hitting the tab key. Unfortunately, after
> executing
> 
>  git stage Überlänge.txt

This is because of OS X's unicode normalisation. Try any of the many threads on the topic, e.g.,

  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/70688

The short version is that this Ü is in fact decomposed into an U-umlaut duo.

Considering that this leads to endless fun[*] not just with git, and that we German speakers have an easy way out (Ueberlaenge), I can only suggest that you avoid umlauts wherever possible to preserve the sanity of your users.

[*] I once had an SVN repo with two different directories both called Übungen. Took me a while to figure out what was going on.

-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch