Question

We received as input in our application (running on Windows) a list of files. These files were automatically extracted from a database with a script.

Apparently some of the names are containing special characters (like accents) and these characters are rendered as ‘©’ on our side.

How can rename programmatically these text files (around 900’000) to get rid of this character?
We cannot change the source neither re-extract the files.
The problem is that because of this character another program involved with our system does not accept the files.

Answer 1

I ended up creating a new script that reads the input files and search for special characters in their title.

It was quite easy indeed:

string filename = filename.Replace("©", "e");

Since the ‘©’ is in the filename, the script (in C#) is able to recognize it and replace the match accordingly. In this way I can loop through all the folders and subfolders simply reading the filename and change specials characters.

Thank you all for the contributions!