Loosing unicode filenames

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#405 8 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@n1vux is already working on this.

Since Sep 25, 2026.

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
65/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
perl
Domain
cli

Research direction

The issue shows ack failing to match a Unicode filename pattern while grep -P works. Look at the ack source code for file name handling and encoding, particularly around Encode::Locale usage. Start by searching for where filenames are read and matched. Test with the provided example to reproduce the issue, then modify the encoding handling to preserve Unicode characters in filenames.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

$ ack 'KVN.2025.\(11'
?????? _ ?????????? ?????????????????? _ 31 _ 2025-08-10 _ www.kvnforall.info.ts.txt
135:Файл: KVN.2025.(11).Letnij.Kubok.HDTV.1080i.Remux.www.kvnforall.info.ts
$ grep -P 'KVN.2025.\(11' *
КВН _ Кубок чемпионов _ 31 _ 2025-08-10 _ www.kvnforall.info.ts.txt:Файл: KVN.2025.(11).Letnij.Kubok.HDTV.1080i.Remux.www.kvnforall.info.ts

I usually use use Encode::Locale (); (plus dealing in the code) for such cases.

Dominant language
Perl
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