file name with foreign characters

[aristo]

Hi all,
I got a file from Germany with a name containing german characters. I have win98. I cannot open, move or rename this file. Can anyone tell me how to deal with this problem?
thanks
aristo

[Computer Hope Admin]

Aristo,

You will need to do the following from MS-DOS. Additional information and help with MS-DOS can also be found on the below page.

http://www.computerhope.com/msdos.htm

Because the file contains characters that the computer may not recognize you will need to utilize wild cards in places that contain unknown characters. For example in the below example let's assume the underscore characters are unknown characters

my_fi__.txt

Because you may not be able to type the characters in using a standard US keyboard substitute those characters with the "?" wild card. So to rename the file you would type:

move my?fi??.txt myfile.txt

This would rename the file to a file that you can work with in Windows and MS-DOS.

Additional information about wild cards can also be found in the below link.

http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/w/wildcard.htm

This information was posted in the Computer Hope database but we definitely admit it was hard to find unless you really searched. We will make not to create a new document with the above information for future reference.