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What encoding is supposed to be used for Zip archive comments? I know that the encoding of file comments (and file names) are determined by Bit 11 of the files' General Purpose Bit Flags. However, there is nothing like that for Zip archive comments, which are stored in the "End of Central Directory Records".

I'm pretty sure that the encoding has to be either IBM Code Page 437 or UTF-8; but how do you know which one? Is it always CP437, even if all the files names/comments in the archive are encoded in UTF-8?

I've read what the Zip file specification has to say about it. Unfortunately, it doesn't go into much detail about ".ZIP File Comment". I've also searched the Internet and Stack Overflow; though there is lots of information about file names and comments within a Zip file, I couldn't find anything about Zip archive comments.

Thanks

Malarial
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Unfortunately, as you stated, ZIP APPNOTE doesn't say anything about this. The best thing you can try is to use PkWare's SecureZIP and add some comments with non-ascii characters and see how they will be stored.

Nickolay Olshevsky
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