Arch Linux

Vilib29

Member

Registered: 2020-02-24

Posts: 7

[SOLVED] Can't paste special characters in terminals

First things first: everything works well in Firefox. I can type everything (including special characters) and I can copy/paste everything.

In the terminal (zsh) I can type some characters (e.g. !"§$%&/()=?) but not others (e.g. üöäß). Furthermore, if I copy some text (e.g. abcüöä) and paste it in my zsh-terminal, it looks like this: abc???

I tried using another terminal: xfce4-terminal. If I paste the same string (abcüöä), the output is: abc <fc><f6><e4>

More infos:

"locale -a" returns (de_CH is my actual keyboard layout):
C
de_CH.utf8
en_US.utf8
POSIX

I have installed many fonts, including ttf-dejavu and ttf-inconsolata.

I would be pretty happy if someone could help me with this problem.

Last edited by Vilib29 (2020-02-25 22:25:31)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,041

Re: [SOLVED] Can't paste special characters in terminals

Bad (non-utf, likely) locale,

locale

Possible reasons:
* you dind't configure the locale at all
* you just edited the bashrc
* sth. in zshrc resets it
* ceterum censo: OMZ

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Vilib29

Member

Registered: 2020-02-24

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Can't paste special characters in terminals

Bad (non-utf, likely) locale,

locale

Possible reasons:
* you dind't configure the locale at all
* you just edited the bashrc
* sth. in zshrc resets it
* ceterum censo: OMZ

`locale` returns:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

Since its all UTF-8, it is correctly configured, right?

EDIT: wording

Last edited by Vilib29 (2020-02-25 20:41:13)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,041

Re: [SOLVED] Can't paste special characters in terminals

That's correct, but the LC_ALL makes me wonder whether this stems from a zshrc entry and the locale of the terminal is off

LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 xfce4-terminal

feel free to try any terminal, just make sure it gets LC_ALL exported - then try pasting into that terminal.

Also

localectl

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Vilib29

Member

Registered: 2020-02-24

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Can't paste special characters in terminals

@seth many thanks for your reply! Because of your post I re-checked the Localization section from the installation guide and noticed that I somehow forgot to create the `/etc/locale.conf` file.

If anyone stumbles upon this thread, simply create the file. In my case I entered the following content:

LANG=de_CH.UTF-8

Everything works perfectly fine now. Many thanks again - Arch truly has an awesome community!

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,041

Re: [SOLVED] Can't paste special characters in terminals

Cool.
Please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

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