Git character encoding with Spanish characters

Question

I created a repository from existing files. Inside the set of files, was one with the name "español.gif". Now, everytime I do

$ git status

I receive an error:

$ path/espa�ol.gif: Protocol error

I tried removing the files using

$ git rm path/espa�ol.gif
$ git rm --cached path/espa�ol.gif
$ git rm path/espa?ol.gif
$ git rm --cached path/espa?ol.gif

but, nothing changes, it keeps saying "Protocol error".

If I try a merge, I receive:

error: Your local changes to 'path/espa�ol.gif' would be overwritten by merge. Aborting.

Is there any way to remove the file from the index, and stop having this error?

Edit: I solved the problem deleting the Git repository and creating it again, without any file with an Spanish character in the name.

Answer 1

This should solve the problem

git config core.quotepath false

From man git-config(1) for core.quotepath:

The commands that output paths (e.g. ls-files, diff), when not given the -z option, will quote “unusual” characters in the pathname by enclosing the pathname in a double-quote pair and with backslashes the same way strings in C source code are quoted. If this variable is set to false, the bytes higher than 0×80 are not quoted but output as verbatim. Note that double quote, backslash and control characters are always quoted without -z regardless of the setting of this variable.

Answer 2

You could also use git clean (probably git clean -d -f but consult git manual first!) command to remove untracked files - this is the reason for error message "error: Your local changes ....".

Because of the encoding problems, Git probably already created a file with a bad filename and although the whole (pull/push?) operation was rejected, the already created file remained in the destination.