Zip with Unicode Filenames

The NTFS filesystem supports Unicode and filenames can contain characters in any language. However, the Zip file standard is only capable of supporting a single language at a time (i.e. a single OEM code page). If your computer's default OEM code page is different than the language of the filename, then you would need to set the Zip.OemCodePage property to the correct value prior to appending files.

Here is a list of OEM code pages:
437 OEM - United States
737 OEM - Greek (formerly 437G)
775 OEM - Baltic
850 OEM - Multilingual Latin I
852 OEM - Latin II
855 OEM - Cyrillic (primarily Russian)
857 OEM - Turkish
858 OEM - Multlingual Latin I + Euro symbol
860 OEM - Portuguese
861 OEM - Icelandic
862 OEM - Hebrew
863 OEM - Canadian - French
864 OEM - Arabic
865 OEM - Nordic
866 OEM - Russian
869 OEM - Modern Greek
874 ANSI/OEM - Thai (same as 28605, ISO 8859-15)
932 ANSI/OEM - Japanese, Shift-JIS
936 ANSI/OEM - Simplified Chinese (PRC, Singapore)
949 ANSI/OEM - Korean (Unified Hangeul Code)
950 ANSI/OEM - Traditional Chinese (Taiwan; Hong Kong SAR, PRC)

Download Chilkat Python Library

import sys
import chilkat


#  This example creates a .zip with filenames containing
#  Chinese characters.  Using Chilkat Zip, the .zip can
#  be created and unzipped on any locale computer.  However,
#  to unzip using a program such as WinZip, it must run
#  on a computer with the correct locale.

zip = chilkat.CkZip()

#  Any string unlocks the component for the 1st 30-days.
success = zip.UnlockComponent("Anything for 30-day trial")
if (success != True):
    print zip.lastErrorText()
    sys.exit()

zip.NewZip("chinese.zip")

#  Set the OEM code page to Chinese Big5
zip.put_OemCodePage(950)

#  Add references to all files under a "chinese" subdirectory.
#  This directory will contain filenames having Chinese characters.
zip.AppendFiles("chinese",True)

success = zip.WriteZipAndClose()
if (success != True):
    print zip.lastErrorText()
    sys.exit()

#  Create a new instance of a zip object.  Load the .zip
#  we previously created and unzip to another directory.
zip2 = chilkat.CkZip()

#  Don't forget to set the OEM code page...
zip2.put_OemCodePage(950)

success = zip2.OpenZip("chinese.zip")
if (success != True):
    print zip2.lastErrorText()
    sys.exit()

#  This will unzip correctly on any locale computer.
success = zip2.Unzip("outDir")
if (success != True):
    print zip2.lastErrorText()
else:
    print "unzipped!"