If a zip file contains the filenames which are Japanese, the encoding normally is SHIFT_JIS especially Windows. To extract the files, normal “unzip” will not work. 7z is a good solution.
The following commands are done in terminal. Firstly, we need to change the LANG environment variable, because the default LANG is normally UTF-8. Since the filenames are SHIFT_JIS, which is not UTF-8, we need to change it.
LANG=ja_JP # Don't use UTF-8, use "export" if needed
Then,
7z x jp.zip #extract the files and preserve the encoding
As a result, a list of unreadable files are extracted. Then use convmv command to convert the filenames. Assuming all the files are in a same folder.
convmv --notest -f shift-jis -t utf8 *.* #convert all the filename to UTF8
If we don’t know the character encoding for the filenames, we can also use the iconv to check the encoding before extract them,
env LANG=ja_JP 7z l jp.zip | iconv -f SHIFT-JIS -t UTF8
Update (2011-05-16):
The easiest way is using the 7-zip through Wine and installing all the required fonts through winetricks.
Please, fix you article:
“7z a jp.zip” this don’t extract. Use the command “7z e” to extract.
Thanks, I didn’t notice that.
“7z e” extracts without preserving paths, “7z x” extracts while preserving paths
similar thing with convmv, you need “-r” switch for it do work recursively through all directories. Using “*” instead “*.*” also is a good idea, unlike with Windows, it doesn’t match files without an extension…
Thank you. I used that command because the file I was extracting did not have any path within.
Thank you very much for this! Broken encoding was driving me totally insane!
unzip -O CP932 japanese_sjis.zip
Allemcch, thank you so much for posting this. I needed some Shift-JIS-encoded documents for work, and with your help I was able to read the filenames properly.
it works like a charm!
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Though this solution is excellent (including the ones in the comments with the sneaky -O option in unzip, neat!), I guess it will only work if you have this locale installed and/or created with locale.gen.
Here, I have a Lubuntu installation with, for instance, does not even provide a ISO-8859-15 encoding by default: all is UTF-8 only. Wait, how do I know that?
By typing
locale -a
Hi Allen, Could you please give me the full command line using this statement?
env LANG=ja_JP 7z l jp.zip | iconv -f SHIFT-JIS -t UTF8. You mention in your article that you can detect the encoding prior to extracting the file using 7-zip. I tried using 7za env LANG=ja_JP 7z l [file name].zip | iconv -f SHIFT-JIS -t UTF8 but that didn’t work. Thanks!
Hi George, that is the full command.
env LANG=ja_JP 7z l jp.zip | iconv -f SHIFT-JIS -t UTF8
It is not “detect”, but to “check”. That means we need to have a prior knowledge what is the encoding of the filename before we check it by using iconv. If your filename is GBK instead of SHIFT-JIS, then you need to use iconv -f GBK.
Please read another article also https://allencch.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/extracting-files-from-zip-which-contains-non-utf8-filename-in-linux/