Add non-ASCII file names to zip in Java

Question

What is the best way to add non-ASCII file names to a zip file using Java, in such a way that the files can be properly re

Answer 1

In Zip files, according to the spec owned by PKWare, the encoding of file names and file comments is IBM437. In 2007 PKWare extended the spec to also allow UTF-8. This says nothing about the encoding of the files contained within the zip. Only the encoding of the filenames.

I think all tools and libraries (Java and non Java) support IBM437 (which is a superset of ASCII), and fewer tools and libraries support UTF-8. Some tools and libs support other code pages. For example if you zip something using WinRar on a computer running in Shanghai, you will get the Big5 code page. This is not "allowed" by the zip spec but it happens anyway.

The DotNetZip library for .NET does Unicode, but of course that doesn't help you if you are using Java!

Using the Java built-in support for ZIP, you will always get IBM437. If you want an archive with something other than IBM437, then use a third party library, or create a JAR.