Reading filenames with characters other than a-z

Question

Hi!
My problem is that I'm writing very simple integration that only transfers files around. Problem is that some directories and filenames have for example scandinavien characters.
Examples:
D:\lähtevä\lähtö.xml
Problem is that when I read files/directories via following code while in the D:\lähtevä folder:
File dir = new File(fname);
String[] chld = dir.list();
if(chld == null){
System.out.println("Specified directory does not exist or is not a directory.");
System.exit(0);
}else{
for(int i = 0; i < chld.length; i++){
String fileName = chld;
System.out.println(fileName);
variable "fname" would be "." given from command line when application starts up.
Result is that all "ä" letters become "&#931;" characters. Other scandinavian letters are also messed up. I'm running on windows machine.
What is the correct way to read filenames so that their country-specific characters are not messed up?

Answer 1

Will this small test run correctly on your machine?
public class ReadingFilesWithNonASCIINames {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String dirPath = "E:/lähtevä";
        String fName = "lähtö.txt";
        File directory = new File(dirPath);
        assert directory.exists();
        File file = new File(directory, fName);
        assert file.exists();
        //Now try to read it
        try {
            FileReader reader = new FileReader(file);
            int c;
            while((c = reader.read()) != -1) {
                System.out.print((char)c);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
}Compile it and run it with -ea flag. On my machine it ran without any problems (Windows XP, BE/fr locale, default encoding for files: System default -- windows-1252)