Java UTF-8 filenames with IBM JVM (AIX)

I'm having trouble understanding the way the IBM JVM's implementation of `java.io.File` deals with UTF-8 on AIX on the JFS2 filesystem. I suspect there's a system property that I'm overlooking, but I have not yet been able to find it. Let's assume I have a file named `othér` (where `é` is U+00E9 or UTF-8 bytes`0xc3 0xa9`). The filename is encoded in UTF-8, and was created by a C program: ``` char filename[] = { 'o', 't', 'h', 0xc3, 0xa9, 'r', 0 }; open(filename, O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0666); ``` If I create a Unicode string in Java that is representative of the filename, it fails to open it. Further, if I use `File.listFiles()` in Java, it insists on treating this as a Latin1 string. For example: ``` String expectedName = new String(new char[] { 'o', 't', 'h', 0xe9, 'r' }); File expected = new File(expectedName); if (expected.exists()) System.out.println(expectedName + " exists"); else System.out.println(expectedName + " DOES NOT exist"); for (File child : new File(".").listFiles()) { System.out.println(child.getName()); System.out.print("Chars:"); for (char c : child.getName().toCharArray()) System.out.print(" 0x" + Integer.toHexString((int)c)); System.out.println(); } ``` The results of this program are: ``` % java -Dfile.encoding=UTF8 FileTest othér DOES NOT exist othér Chars: 0x6f 0x74 0x68 0xc3 0xa9 0x72 ``` So it appears that my filenames are getting treated as Latin1. I've tried setting the `file.encoding` system property to `UTF8` and the `client.encoding.override` system property to `UTF-8` to no avail. My `LANG` and `LC_ALL` settings are `en_US.UTF-8`: ``` % echo $LANG en_US.UTF-8 % echo $LC_ALL en_US.UTF-8 ``` My system's "Primary Language Environment", as configured by SMIT, is "ISO8859-1". I don't really know the full impact this setting has, but I cannot change it. I suspect that if I could change this to "UTF8 English" then that may fix the problem, but since JFS2 stores filenames in Unicode and Java operates in Unicode internally, I feel like there should be a more general solution to the problem. Is there another system property to J9 that I can set that will make force it to use UTF-8 filenames regardless of my SMIT setting? AIX version is 5.2, Java version is IBM J9 (1.5.0), filesystem is JFS2: ``` rs6000% uname -a AIX rs6000 2 5 000A9B7C4C00 rs6000% java -version java version "1.5.0" Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build pap32dev-20091106a (SR11 )) IBM J9 VM (build 2.3, J2RE 1.5.0 IBM J9 2.3 AIX ppc-32 j9vmap3223-20091104 (JIT enabled) J9VM - 20091103_45935_bHdSMr JIT - 20091016_1845_r8 GC - 20091026_AA) JCL - 20091106 rs6000% mount|grep /home /dev/hd1 /home jfs2 Jun 27 16:02 rw,log=/dev/hd8 ``` Update: this still occurs on Java6: ``` % java -version java version "1.6.0" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build pap3260sr11-20120806_01(SR11)) IBM J9 VM (build 2.4, JRE 1.6.0 IBM J9 2.4 AIX ppc-32 jvmap3260sr11-20120801_118201 (JIT enabled, AOT enabled) J9VM - 20120801_118201 JIT - r9_20120608_24176ifx1 GC - 20120516_AA) JCL - 20120713_01 ```