diff --git a/Scripts/developer_scripts/test_merge_of_branch b/Scripts/developer_scripts/test_merge_of_branch
index 65140a69f13..c6f6fdb00b8 100755
--- a/Scripts/developer_scripts/test_merge_of_branch
+++ b/Scripts/developer_scripts/test_merge_of_branch
@@ -128,7 +128,7 @@ fi
 
 #check no file contains non-utf8 characters
 echo '.. Checking if non utf-8 characters are used...'
-txt_not_utf8=$(git ls-files -z --stage | cut -z -f2- | xargs -0 file -N | grep "text" | egrep -v "UTF-8|ASCII|XML|EPS|FIG|assembler source|Perl script|from flex")
+txt_not_utf8=$(git ls-files -z --stage | awk -F"\t" 'BEGIN { RS="\0" }; { printf "%s\0", $2; }' | xargs -0 file -N | grep "text" | egrep -v "UTF-8|ASCII|XML|EPS|FIG|assembler source|Perl script|from flex")
 if [ -n "${txt_not_utf8}" ]; then
   echo "The following files have non utf-8 characters:"
   echo ${txt_not_utf8}