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Re: Invisible zero-width characters in file names

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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"í"b" .
> No idea what this accented i represents.

Regards,

-- 
Bruce Horrocks
Hampshire, England

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Invisible zero-width characters in file names nospam@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J. Lodder) - 2026-04-22 14:18 +0200
  Re: Invisible zero-width characters in file names richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) - 2026-04-22 12:42 +0000
    Re: Invisible zero-width characters in file names richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) - 2026-04-22 13:05 +0000
    Re: Invisible zero-width characters in file names nospam@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J. Lodder) - 2026-04-23 21:53 +0200
      Re: Invisible zero-width characters in file names richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) - 2026-04-23 20:02 +0000
  Re: Invisible zero-width characters in file names Alan B <alanrichardbarker@gmail.com.invalid> - 2026-04-22 12:46 +0000
  Re: Invisible zero-width characters in file names Bruce <07.013@scorecrow.com> - 2026-04-25 21:41 +0100

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