quoth Ben Franksen
Perhaps it is simpler to write our own getArgs/getEnv functions and directly convert the data we get from the system to a proper (Unicode) String?
I may be confused here - trying this out, I seem to be getting garbage I don't understand from System.Environment getArgs. But there's a System.Posix.Env.ByteString getArgs, that looks like just what you propose above. import qualified Data.ByteString.Char8 as P import qualified System.Posix.Env.ByteString as B import qualified Data.Text as T import Data.Text.Encoding (decodeUtf8, encodeUtf8) argsb <- B.getArgs putStrLn ("byte args: " ++ show(argsb)) let argsu = map (encodeUtf8 . T.pack . P.unpack) argsb putStrLn ("UTF8 byte args: " ++ show(argsu)) $ ./cvtargs [string that perhaps should not be in this email!] byte args: ["S\228kkij\228rven","Polkka"] UTF8 byte args: ["S\195\164kkij\195\164rven","Polkka"] Donn