Re: tar: Can't translate pathname 'xxx' to UTF-8

[Taylor R Campbell <riastradh%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

> Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:18:51 +0000
> From: Taylor R Campbell <riastradh%NetBSD.org@localhost>
> 
> > Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:32:06 +0100
> > From: Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%pkgsrc.org@localhost>
> > 
> > I don't really understand why it doesn't JFDI and extract the bytes, and 
> > [...]
> 
> GNU tar _does_ take the extended header path verbatim, _if_ conversion
> to UTF-8 fails.
> [...]
> - GNU tar does what you want but the maintainers may view what you
>   want as a bug and might fix it later.

Actually, correction: GNU tar doesn't really do what you want either.

It _first_ tries to convert what's in the extended pax header path
field to your locale, and _if that fails_, then it _falls back_ to
taking the bytes of the extended pax header path field verbatim.

So nobody does what you want, but sometimes it might accidentally look
that way if you're lucky, with different constellations of versions
and bugs aligned with the phase of the moon.