Bug report: Encoding/Parsing error with non-ASCII characters (e.g., £) in position 0 of password.

[aranuir111]

I found a specific bug in NppFTP where if the FTP password starts with a non-ASCII character (specifically the "£" symbol, hex C2A3 in UTF-8 or A3 in ANSI), the authentication fails with "530 Login incorrect".

Steps to reproduce:

Set an FTP password starting with "£" (e.g., £Password123).

Try to connect via NppFTP.

Connection fails.

Change the password moving the "£" to any other position (e.g., P£assword123).

Connection works perfectly.

Observations:
It seems the plugin's parser or the obfuscation algorithm fails to correctly handle/encode the first byte if it's an extended ASCII character. Writing the password directly in nppftp.xml as a character entity (£) results in the password being cleared upon restart, suggesting a validation issue at startup.

[aranuir111]

Workaround for "Error 530 - Login Failed" with special characters (e.g., £) at the beginning of the password
I found a definitive workaround for the 530 Login authentication failed error that occurs when a password starts with a non-ASCII character like the pound symbol (£).
The issue appears to be an encoding mismatch. If you type the character directly into the NppFTP password field, it may be processed as a multi-byte UTF-8 character (e.g., C2 A3), which causes the plugin to misinterpret the first byte and corrupt the entire encrypted string or the transmission buffer.
How to fix it:
To resolve this, you must force the password into the plugin as a single-byte ANSI character:
Create a new file in Notepad++.
Go to the Encoding menu and select ANSI.
Type your password (e.g., £password). Verify that the symbol displays correctly as a single character.
Copy the password from the editor.
Go to NppFTP > Profile Settings and Paste the password into the password field.
Close and Save the profile.
Technical Note:
By copying from an ANSI-encoded file, you ensure the symbol is passed as a single byte (hex A3). This allows NppFTP to handle the buffer correctly from the very first character, resulting in a successful login.
Test and Validation:
I have personally tested this workaround on my machine, and it immediately resolved the Error 530 I was experiencing. By following these steps, the connection was successful on the first attempt, proving that the issue is indeed related to how the first character's encoding is handled by the plugin.

[chcg]

@aranuir111 Which version of Windows, N++ and NppFTP plugin are you using?

[aranuir111]

Latest, N++ 8.9.2, NppFTP 0.29.15