Unicode (utf-8) with git-bash

I faced the same issue in MSYS Git 2.8.0 and as it turned out it just needed changing the configuration.

$ git --version

git version 2.8.0.windows.1

The default configuration of Git Bash console in my system did not show Greek filenames.

$cd ~

$ls

AppData/
'Application Data'@
Contacts/
Cookies@
Desktop/
Documents/
Downloads/
Favorites/
Links/
'Local Settings'@
NTUSER.DAT
.
.
.
''$'\316\244\316\261'' '$'\316\255\316\263\316\263\317\201\316\261\317\206\316\254'' '$'\316\274\316\277\317\205'@

The last line should display “Τα έγγραφά μου”, the greek translation of “My Documents”. In order to fix it I followed the below steps:

1. Check your existing locale configuration

   $locale
   
   LANG=en
   LC_CTYPE="C"
   LC_NUMERIC="C"
   LC_TIME="C"
   LC_COLLATE="C"
   LC_MONETARY="C"
   LC_MESSAGES="C"
   LC_ALL=
   

   As shown above, in my case it was not UTF-8

2. Change the locale to a UTF-8 encoding. Click the icon on the left side of MINGW title bar, select “Options” and in the “Text” category choose “UTF-8” Character set. You should also choose a unicode font, such as the default “Lucida Console”. My configuration looks as following:
   

3. Change the language for the current window (no need to do this on future windows, as they will be created with the settings of step 2)

    $ LANG='C.UTF-8'
   

4. The ls command should now display properly

   AppData/
   'Application Data'@
   Contacts/
   Cookies@
   Desktop/
   Documents/
   Downloads/
   Favorites/
   Links/
   'Local Settings'@
   NTUSER.DAT
   .
   .
   .
   'Τα έγγραφά μου'@