php how to output arabic characters on windows using powershell

Question

I have the below PHP script

<?php
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
$file = "//192.168.10.206/wwwroot/SABIS CORPORATE/PrepList/Documents/41/1516 Level I Arabic Basic Questions and Answers T1 الأسلوب الخبري.pdf"; 
echo $file; 
?>

and the result is always

PS C:\Users\aaoun> php -q c:\Users\aaoun\Desktop\Test-AAA.php
//192.168.10.206/wwwroot/SABIS CORPORATE/PrepList/Documents/41/1516 Level I Arabic Basic Questions and Answers T1 ╪د┘╪ث
╪│┘┘ê╪ذ ╪د┘╪«╪ذ╪▒┘è.pdf PS C:\Users\aaoun>

I tried UT8 encoding

iconv("unicode", "utf-8", $file);    
iconv("Latin1_General_CI_AS","utf-8",$file); 
iconv("Arabic_CI_AS","utf-8",$file); 
base64_encode($file); 
utf8_encode($file);     
base64_decode($file); 
utf8_decode($file);  
iconv('WINDOWS-1256', 'UTF-8', $file);   
iconv('cp1256', 'UTF-8', $file);

Nothing seems to work, I keep getting wrong text I need to get the text to check if the file exists ...

/ / 1 9 2 . 1 6 8 . 1 0 . 2 0 6 / w w w r o o t / S A B I S C O R P O R A T E / P r e p L i s t / D o c u m e n t s / 4 1 / 1 5 1 6 L e v e l I A r a b i c B a s i c Q u e s t i o n s a n d A n s w e r s T 1 ♠'♠D♠#♠3♠D♠H ♠( ♠'♠D♠.♠(♠1♠J . p d fPHP Warning: file_exists() expects parameter 1 to be a valid path, string given in C:\Users\aao un\Desktop\Test-AAA.php on line 6 — Anthony, Dec 14 '15 at 12:56

NSNoob · Answer 1 · 2015-12-14T13:36:09.260

0

Ensure that the encoding of the file-system is the same as the encoding of the string that contains the file-name in your PHP code.

Otherwise you're testing for the wrong file to exist.

For example, if your file-system does not support UTF-8 but the file-name is encoded in UTF-8. As you are using Windows, it is worth noting that Windows filesystems (FAT, FAT32, NTFS) are not UTF-8 aware. you can convert your file name to UTF-16 like

$newName = mb_convert_encoding('your file path', 'UTF-16', 'UTF-8');

If that does not work, you can use urlencode. All characters returned from urlencode are valid in filenames (NTFS/HFS/UNIX).

$newName = urlencode($file);

Try this code to know if the file exists:

if (file_exists('your file path')) {   
//file exists;                         
}
else
{
//Does not exist
}

edited Dec 14 '15 at 13:36

answered Dec 14 '15 at 12:00

NSNoob

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If I open the url I can find the file, – Anthony Dec 14 '15 at 12:07
@user5514667 can you add the implementation of how you are using this method in your question? – NSNoob Dec 14 '15 at 12:10
– Anthony Dec 14 '15 at 12:14
If the file name does not contain arabic letter the result will be true – Anthony Dec 14 '15 at 12:14
Yes this happens when encoding of file path is not same as encoding of file system. That returns a wrong path and hence wrong results. What file system do you use? NTFS or FAT32? – NSNoob Dec 14 '15 at 12:15
The server file system is NTFS – Anthony Dec 14 '15 at 12:25
NTFS might accept UTF 16 encoded file name. But it will definitely not pick UTF 8 encoded ones. – NSNoob Dec 14 '15 at 12:30
– Anthony Dec 14 '15 at 12:44
– Anthony Dec 14 '15 at 12:45
file_exists() expects parameter 1 to be a valid path, – Anthony Dec 14 '15 at 12:45
NSNoob: Thanks for your help,.. Any other thoughts ? – Anthony Dec 14 '15 at 13:01
@user5514667 you can use `urlencode ($file )` All characters returned from urlencode are valid in filenames (NTFS/HFS/UNIX), then you can just urldecode the filenames back to UTF-8 (or whatever encoding they were in). – NSNoob Dec 14 '15 at 13:14
After encoding the file, checking if the file exists return False. – Anthony Dec 14 '15 at 13:35
Well the answer to your original question is the same. You have another problem now, how to read files with Arabic names. I don't think I have any more ideas to fix that. – NSNoob Dec 14 '15 at 13:35

php how to output arabic characters on windows using powershell

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