Error: File not found

[neutronstar]

Hi!

Thanks for all your support using you're fine tool!
I'm a long term user, this is my first post (actually I just signed up)


this is how my win10 batch file is calling ExifTool:

"E:\11 aa jz toKindle Fire>exiftool.exe -i "00 SnapShots" -* *.* -r . -i "10 HW Rasperry Pi- YI MI cam- NX500 hack"  1>jzFilesCreatedDate.txt"

at first I thought the error was due to long file names, but other files in the same folder, with longer names, worked
Is there a file name length limit?

I managed to track it down to somehow the file names include odd characters...possibly since I downloaded this from my family, who uses iPhone/macs instead of win10

so I suspect that maybe the file names include unicode?

I also get this message:

   Warning: [Win32::FindFile] No support for unicode surrogates - ./11 aa jz Music Videos

the File Not Found error's are like:

(not obvious what the error is. Possibly has odd character)
    Error: File not found - ./11 aa aa aa aa jz Personal/11 aa aa jz Memories and Logs/Mom and how she loved Beutry Contests - May 9 2018/11 aa aa jz Memories - Mom and how she loved Beutry Contests - May 9 2018-Tiny USB Recorder-2018-04-02-07-17-00-audacity NR.wav

obvious odd character in the file name:
   Error: File not found - ./11 aa jz Favorite Videos/Other Videos/From Dusk Till Dawn _ æThe Art of SeductionÆ (HD) - George Clooney, Quentin Tara.mp4

Is there an easy fix, like some command line switch?
If not I have other possible workarounds (renaming the bad file names)

thanks so much!

[StarGeek]

See FAQ #18 and FAQ #10.

Windows Command Line¹ doesn't deal with with accented and similar characters.  Try the options listed in FAQ 18 and add the -charset filename option listed in 10.  If you search these forums, you'll find a lot of posts about the problem.

Myself, I was never able to get any of these to work on my Windows machine until I used this StackOverflow answer.  But that option has a side effect of altering fonts and GUIs in older programs.

At some point I should probably try and figure out the Windows Subsystem for Linux and see if the problem persists there.

Edit: ¹specified command line

[StarGeek]

I finally took the time to grab some images that show the differences with the StackOverflow answer I linked.  It's a pain because you have to reboot after turning that option on and off.

It doesn't affect all GUIs, mostly older stuff.

This is how my scanner options window is supposed to look



And this is how it looks after setting the UTF8 option.  If the window was large to begin with, it might push some GUI elements completely out of the window.

[neutronstar]

Thanks all!

So my workable solution is to rename the strange file names,
since there are a only a few of them


I checked and apparently the NTFS file system allows those characters,
which surprised me!

"In both NTFS and FAT file systems, the special file name characters are: '\', '/', '.', '?', and '*'.
On OEM code pages, these special characters are in the ASCII range of characters (0x00 through 0x7F).
Their Unicode equivalents are the same values in a 2-byte form, 0x0000 through 0x007F."
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/intl/character-sets-used-in-file-names

I haven't checked but my long past history of strange characters sometimes
the computers won't print or display them, making them "hidden" from visually checking

Ahh the joys of cross-platform compatability!! lol