From: James Gray <james@...>
Date: 2009-07-09T01:38:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby 1.8 - character encoding

On Jul 8, 2009, at 11:30 AM, Thomas Thomassen wrote:

> I checked the $KCODE variable and it returns "UTF8".
>
> Now, what does that do to Ruby?

I answer that question in detail in this article:

http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/the_kcode_variable_and_jcode_library

> Why does File.exist?('c:\Test זרו') fail if it's UTF-8 encoded?

The IO methods are not $KCODE aware.  You will likely need to  
transcode the Strings you pass them.

James Edward Gray II