# Problems with German special characters

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-german-special-characters/155171>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [December 8, 2008, 11:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-german-special-characters/155171 "2008-12-08T23:35:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ollip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/54ee81/32.png) [@ollip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ollip)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 11:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-german-special-characters/155171/1 "2008-12-08T23:35:33Z")

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Hi,

I have been fighting for a while now with a problem that the German  
special vowls (Umlaute), e.g. üöä get scrambled when read in from file  
using IO.readlines. I have played quite some time with various code  
pages. But that didn’t fix the problem. I lately realized that those üöä  
aren’t even written correctly to the console when starting rails from  
the command prompt using ruby script/server, for example:

127.0.0.1 - - [08/Dec/2008:20:22:50 Westeuropõische Normalzeit] "POST  
/mypet/d

This should be Westeurop\>äõ\<ische. Even when I  
start up plain Rails those specials vowls get scrambled. Does anybody  
have some idea?

Thanks, Oliver