Broken characters are shown

Characters are not Displaying Correctly

Non ASCII characters may at time not be able to be shown like below:

Abnormal status:

Normal status:



This is caused by differences between language settings. 

System $LANG Environment Variable.


To fix this issue run a command to find out what language and which encoding of that language is being utilized by your terminal.

test@uby:~$ echo $LANG
ko_KR.UTF-8
test@uby:~$

The output above indicates that the terminal is displaying information in the Korean format and the encoding of Korean characters is UTF-8.
Broken characters are due to this encoding discordance with the terminal emulator.


The Encoding of Xshell


The encoding of the tool bar is set by the session file. But this can be changed at any time and even after the session is started. So when broken characters are shown, check this value.


Match the Encoding Between the Terminal and Xshell

The encoding of Unix and Linux is UTF-8 or Non-UTF-8. UTF-8 is common to all languages and utf8 and UTF-8 are the same. One is the alias of the other.


But Non-UTF-8 encoding is a little different. If your system uses Non UTF-8 such as EUC(Extend Unix Codes), ISO8859 series, or various Chinese encodings like BIG5, GB, etc., first set the encoding of Xshell to Default Language and try switching between the other encodings in the "More" area of the encoding button.

You may need to go through several encodings to find the one that will work correctly.