ENOENT error on macOS when indexing files with umlaut characters in paths

[c-stoeckl]

When adding a collection on macOS, qmd fails to index files containing non-ASCII characters (like German umlauts) in directory or file names. The error shows mojibake encoding artifacts suggesting a UTF-8 encoding issue.

Environment

• OS: macOS (any version)
• qmd version: latest
• Shell: zsh/bash
• File location: iCloud Drive, Obsidian vaults, or any directory with non-ASCII filenames

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a file with umlaut characters:

   mkdir -p ~/test-notes/Jürgen\ Müller
   echo "# Test note" > ~/test-notes/Jürgen\ Müller/note.md

2. Add as collection:

   qmd collection add ~/test-notes --name test-encoding

Expected Behavior

Collection should index successfully, recognizing files like Jürgen Müller/note.md.

Actual Behavior

Indexing fails with ENOENT:

ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat '/Users/user/test-notes/J[corrupted-path]/note.md'

The error shows mojibake (corrupted UTF-8 interpreted as Latin-1).

Root Cause

Bun UTF-8 Path Corruption Bug

Investigation revealed that only Bun.file().stat() has a bug that corrupts UTF-8 file paths internally before making system calls:

• ✗ Bun.file(path).stat() - BROKEN - corrupts UTF-8 paths, causes ENOENT
• ✓ Bun.file(path).text() - WORKS - uses different code path, not affected

When calling Bun.file(filepath).stat() on paths containing non-ASCII characters (e.g., German umlauts like ö, ü, ä), Bun mangles the encoding, causing the underlying stat() syscall to receive a corrupted path.

Example:

• Input path: naïve-notes.txt (with composed Unicode characters)
• Corrupted path in syscall: mojibake bytes causing ENOENT

Suggested Fix

Replace Bun.file().stat() calls with Node.js fs module:

// Before (broken):
const stat = await Bun.file(filepath).stat();

// After (works):
import { statSync } from 'fs';
const stat = statSync(filepath);

While only .stat() is buggy, we may also standardize on readFileSync() instead of Bun.file().text() for API consistency.

Additional Context

• This affects files with: German umlauts (ä, ö, ü), French accents (é, è, ê), etc.
• German, French, Japanese, and other non-ASCII users are impacted
• Node.js fs module handles UTF-8 paths correctly on macOS
• Original thought was this was macOS NFD encoding issue, but investigation revealed it's specifically a Bun bug

Related

• PR fix: normalize Unicode paths to NFC for macOS compatibility #82 contains the fix