how to handle ascii non-printable characters in java

Question

We have people sending non-printable \\x86 type of characters in byte array in Java and when we convert it to us-ascii string, it inserts junk character in the ascii text.

Is there a format for string/other way to handle non-printable ascii characters while converting data from formats like EBCDIC to ASCII in Java?

Answer 1

How would you like to handle them? Replace them with something printable (such as '?')? Remove them entirely? Some other action?

Answer 2

If you are in the US or "Western Europe" (UK, France, Germany), the character set probably is Windows-1252 . Single-byte charset US-ASCII covers 128 characters, single-byte charset Windwos-1252 is a superset covering all 255 characters in the byte range.

Easiest is a translation table for \€ - \ÿ. String, as some might be better replaced by several chars, say \Œ by "OE".