validity of executable file names and the uncertainty of the outcome of such experimentation from the file system integrity perspective.
Mike,
These are absolutely valid Unicode file names. Microsoft takes pride in that, and if a Billion Chinese users had the same fear as you, it would be bad for their business.
At least on my Italian OS, none of these exes had any problems
*)You might check your views on locales. Afaik Windows Explorer doesn't care for locales, it just uses Unicode under the hood, even if it can't display the font. Do you see them in Explorer, actually? I see all file names properly, and I doubt that all these fonts are installed by default.
It is a problem, though, for non-Unicode file managers like my old FreeCommander version. When I double-click the ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?.exe, nothing happens. However, even then, file integrity problems should be a phenomenon of the very very early days of Windows.
P.S.: I've had a look at MSDN, who confirm what I wrote on the use of Unicode above. There is one notable exception:
The use of the Yen symbol in applications that work on FAT filesystems:
For security reasons, your applications should not typically allow the character U+00A5 in a Unicode string that might be converted for use as a FAT file name.
*) I just tested the PlayingWithUnicode.zip attached above also on a FAT32 USB stick. Everything works like a charm, including saving rotated images in Hindi, Chinese, Russian etc; I did a scandisk afterwards, no problems found.
