How to programmatically rename a file containing decomposed characters? - unicode

Question

I occasionnaly have to deal with files produced in a Mac environment, and with filenames containing decomposed characters (looks like "é", but really is "e´"). Those are visibly not recognized by Scripting.FileSystemObject and therefore cannot be acted on. I need to programmatically rename those files to remove the decomposed characters before further processing.
From what I found : "é (U+00E9) is a character that can be decomposed into an equivalent string of the base letter e (U+0065) and combining acute accent (U+0301)."
In other words, both strings look exactly like this : "é", but the length of the first one is 1 and the length of the second one is 2. If converted, it actually looks like this "e´".
Here's a little script for testing purposes :
(Please create those two test files by copy/pasting the names)
Filename with composed character (working) : é.txt
Filename with decomposed character (not working) : é.txt
Set args = WScript.Arguments
Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
For Each Arg in Wscript.Arguments
Set objFile = FSO.GetFile(Arg)
fPath = Left(objFile.Path, Len(objFile.Path)-Len(objFile.Name))
FSO.movefile arg, fpath & "a.txt"
Set objFile = Nothing
Set FSO = Nothing
next
The file with the decomposed character produces a "File not found" error.
I managed to convert a string from decomposed to composed characters, but still not working when trying to rename an actual file.
I'm completely stuck at this point, and any help would be highly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This has to do with the VBS/WSH DropHandler (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VBSFile\ShellEx\DropHandler)
The DropHandler of VBS/WSH files is {60254CA5-953B-11CF-8C96-00AA00B8708C}.
EXE/BAT/CMD files are handled by {86C86720-42A0-1069-A2E8-08002B30309D}.
VBS/WSH drophandler parses the dropped object(s) to a long file path while the EXE/BAT/CMD drophandler parses the dropped object(s) to short file path (such as C:\PROGRA~1).
The problem is that the DropHandler of VBS doesn't parse the dropped object in Unicode way.
Your code is relying on items being dropped apparently so you rely on the WScript.Arguments.
The FSO functions CAN handle filenames like you describe.
You can test this by performing a
Set objFile = FSO.GetFile("<PATH>\e´.txt")`
or even
FSO.FileExists("<PATH>\e´.txt")
However, coming in through the arguments, the filenames are already crippled by the drophandler. I see no safe way of changing this behaviour other than messing around in the Windows Registry or by changing your script to not use 'drag-'n-drop' but getting the filenames from the OpenFile dialog perhaps.