youtube-dl.exe fails to start if started from the path that has non-english alphabet characters

[TomasPP]

System: Windows 8.1 64bit

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create directory that contains only russian alphabet letters. Example folder name: "ф"
2. Download https://yt-dl.org/downloads/2015.12.29/youtube-dl.exe
   and copy youtube-dl.exe to "ф" directroy
3. run youtube-dl from the folder and get error:
   D:\media?>youtube-dl.exe
   Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\py2exe\boot_common.py", line 92, in
   ImportError: No module named linecache
4. Copy one level up and run. Works without problem.
   D:\media>youtube-dl.exe
   Usage: youtube-dl.exe [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]

[dstftw]

Works fine for me:

C:\ф>youtube-dl.exe -v
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v']
[debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
[debug] youtube-dl version 2015.12.29
[debug] Python version 2.7.10 - Windows-8-6.2.9200
[debug] exe versions: none
[debug] Proxy map: {}
Usage: youtube-dl.exe [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]

youtube-dl.exe: error: You must provide at least one URL.
Type youtube-dl --help to see a list of all options.

[TomasPP]

Sergey thanks for quick check.
What about folder name with Greek letters : "πξκλ" (I get the same error as for "ф")

Probably the trick is to use characters which you do not have on your computer (can not type).
I have pure Windows for English United States.
Location&Format&Region: United States
The Only locale/language I can type is English US.

I wanted to save some Russian youtube videos and copied video titles with russian characters from youtube into directory names :) Hence the error report. Probably too obscure but anyways it was very weird to download exe and get this error :)

[dstftw]

Failed but with different error. However from cmd I neither can run any exe from this directory nor do anything within it, can you? So this is rather locale cmd issue.

[TomasPP]

I open command prompt directly for this directory by: (in windows explorer) holding SHIFT and right clicking on the directory then selecting "Open command window here". Then I can execute exe directly from command prompt. Anyway I see that my report describes weird combination of factors. Feel free to close it.

[dstftw]

Changing system locale to Greek fixed πξκλ folder but broke cyrillic one.

selecting "Open command window here". Then I can execute exe directly from command prompt.

This work now for cyrillic folder with Greek locale but didn't work previously for greek folder with Russian locale.

[TomasPP]

Closing issue as locale cmd issue. youtube-dl.exe fails to start if run from the path that have characters that are outside of your windows locale/keyboard. This is Windows cmd prompt quirk.