From Newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.mac

I have two files in one folder with exactly the same name.
(as far as the eye can see)
This is of course impossible, and indeed,
copy/pasting the name of one onto the other results in a Finder error.
(file name already exists)
File Buddy does not flag the names as identical.

So there must be something invisible there.
Stepping through the name does not reveal a surplus character,
so it isn't a zero-width extra space. (have had that in another name)
What else can there be? A non-ACII space or something like that?

Is there a simple tool that will reveal non-ASCII characters
in file names? [1]

Jan

[1] There is a partial solution in (of all places) MacSoup
A zero-width invisible character (to the Finder)
copy/pastes into MacSoup as a"0"b" .
No idea what this accented i represents.






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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.mac

In article <1rtvrjq.mondcgi81xtvN%nospam@de-ster.demon.nl>,
J. J. Lodder <jjlxa32@xs4all.nl> wrote:

Is there a simple tool that will reveal non-ASCII characters
in file names? [1]

Does "ls -B" show it?

Otherwise a short C program using readdir() should do the trick.

-- Richard
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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.mac

J. J. Lodder <nospam@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote:

I have two files in one folder with exactly the same name.
(as far as the eye can see)
This is of course impossible, and indeed,
copy/pasting the name of one onto the other results in a Finder error.
(file name already exists)
File Buddy does not flag the names as identical.

So there must be something invisible there.
Stepping through the name does not reveal a surplus character,
so it isn't a zero-width extra space. (have had that in another name)
What else can there be? A non-ACII space or something like that?

Is there a simple tool that will reveal non-ASCII characters
in file names? [1]

Jan

[1] There is a partial solution in (of all places) MacSoup
A zero-width invisible character (to the Finder)
copy/pastes into MacSoup as a"|!"b" .
No idea what this accented i represents.

According to <https://ss64.com/mac/ls.html>

ls -b
--
Cheers, Alan
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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.mac

In article <10safnd$mq4f$1@artemis.inf.ed.ac.uk>, I wrote:

Is there a simple tool that will reveal non-ASCII characters
in file names? [1]

Does "ls -B" show it?

Otherwise a short C program using readdir() should do the trick.

Also "LANG=C ls" will display non-ascii bytes as "?".

-- Richard
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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.mac

Richard Tobin <richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote:

In article <1rtvrjq.mondcgi81xtvN%nospam@de-ster.demon.nl>,
J. J. Lodder <jjlxa32@xs4all.nl> wrote:

Is there a simple tool that will reveal non-ASCII characters
in file names? [1]

Does "ls -B" show it?

Otherwise a short C program using readdir() should do the trick.

I'll try. But somehow I had hoped for a direct solution,
like 'show invisibles' does in Finder,

Jan



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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.mac

In article <1ru1fsf.1ocbqddwjhpxiN%nospam@de-ster.demon.nl>,
J. J. Lodder <jjlxa32@xs4all.nl> wrote:

Does "ls -B" show it?

Otherwise a short C program using readdir() should do the trick.

I'll try. But somehow I had hoped for a direct solution,
like 'show invisibles' does in Finder,

I find typing "ls -B" a lot more direct than using the finder!

-- Richard
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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.mac

On 22/04/2026 13:18, J. J. Lodder wrote:

I have two files in one folder with exactly the same name.
(as far as the eye can see)
This is of course impossible, and indeed,
copy/pasting the name of one onto the other results in a Finder error.
(file name already exists)
File Buddy does not flag the names as identical.

So there must be something invisible there.
Stepping through the name does not reveal a surplus character,
so it isn't a zero-width extra space. (have had that in another name)
What else can there be? A non-ACII space or something like that?

Is there a simple tool that will reveal non-ASCII characters
in file names? [1]

As others have pointed out, the "ls -B" command run in the terminal will
force any invisible characters to be visible.

An alternate solution is just rename one of the two to "filea" and the
other to "fileb" to get rid of all previous characters in the filename,
funny or not, and then rename each back to what its actual name should
have been.

Jan

[1] There is a partial solution in (of all places) MacSoup
A zero-width invisible character (to the Finder)
copy/pastes into MacSoup as a"|!"b" .
No idea what this accented i represents.

Regards,
--
Bruce Horrocks
Hampshire, England
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