Jeffrey Winn's Blog

Assorted thoughts and information of nominal value

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If you, like me, use multiple operating systems (OSs), you may run into a situation where one OS does not treat characters the same in file names. This can cause problem between usage, especially when it comes to retaining your file on some kind of storage.

I run my own Nextcloud server, and I use the following chrontab entry to convert bad characters in file names:

# auto-convert "bad" chars in filename...
#0 4 * * * convmv -r -f windows-1252 -t UTF-8 /data/jwinn/files --notest

…note that you must install convmv first (something like: sudo apt install convmv) and there are many options for conversion. Also, in your testing, be sure to drop the “–notest” as above for a dry run, which is the default.

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