Unicode filename problems in linux

Question

I'm running into a problem in linux (Ubuntu). The following test code will throw an exception at the "FileInputStream fis... " line with the file has a unicode filename. However, Windows passes this without problems.
try {
     File dir = new File("a directory that exists");
     File[] files = dir.listFiles(); //get file list
     for (int i = 0; i < files.length; ++i) {
          System.out.println("file " + files.getAbsolutePath());
          FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(files[i]);
} catch (Exception e) {
     System.out.println("Exception: " + e.getMessage());
Does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks!

Answer 1

But the characters are actually chinese. And since
it's on Ubuntu, it would be in UTF-8 encoding
wouldn't it?
The characters display fine in ubuntu but when I try
to read them in using FileInputStream, it fails for
some filenames with strange characters.
I just don't understand why some characters make it
fail and others are fine. It seems that it should
all work or all not work? Perhaps I'm wrong.On my Fedora Core 6,
the result of
echo $LANG
is:
ja_JP.UTF-8
And I tried your program on a directory that has &#30334;&#24230;MP3��&#20840;.txt file in it.
import java.io.*;
public class AlsKdj{
  public static void main(String[] args){
    try {
      File dir = new File(".");
      File[] files = dir.listFiles();
      for (int i = 0; i < files.length; ++i) {
        System.out.println("file " + files.getAbsolutePath());
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(files[i]);
System.out.println(" " + fis.toString());
catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
The output from the program is:
file /root/test/./AlsKdj.class
  java.io.FileInputStream@1a46e30
file /root/test/./&#30334;&#24230;MP3��&#20840;.txt
  java.io.FileInputStream@3e25a5
file /root/test/./bbs.txt
  java.io.FileInputStream@19821f
file /root/test/./WMP.txt
  java.io.FileInputStream@addbf1As shown above, the result is normal if LANG is really UTF-8.
My Java version is:
java version "1.6.0_01"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_01-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.6.0_01-b06, mixed mode, sharing)