Character Encoding in Java

Question

In eclipse, I changed the default encoding to ISO-8859-1. Then I wrote this:

String str = "Русский язык ";
PrintStream ps = new PrintStream(System.out, true, "UTF-8");
ps.print(str);

It should print the String correctly, as I am specifying UTF-8 encoding. However, it is not printing.

Answer 1

ISO-8859-1字符编码仅支持0到255之间的字符，其他任何东西都可能变成'？'

Answer 2

If you save the source file (the .java file) as ISO-8859-1 than str will be encoded by javac using ISO-8859-1. Your problem does not lie in the creation of PrintStream : the str you are printing is wrong from the beginning.

Answer 3

Yes, it looks like the terminal that your are sending this output does not support this encoding.

If you are running Eclipse, you could set the encoding as follows:

• In Run Configurations...->Common ->Encoding->Other
• Select UTF-8

Answer 4

You are basically telling the PrintStream writer to expect the input characters to be UTF-8 encoded and to output it as UTF-8. There is no conversion. If you set your IDE to use ISO-8859-1 as character encoding for your file, which in turns contains the input string than you pipe ISO-8859-1 encoded characters into an UTF-8 expecting writer. So the writer treats the bytes receiving as UTF encoded characters which will result in data junk.

Either set your IDE to encode your source files in UTF-8 and check that your characters are correctly displayed and stored. Or tell your writer to treat them as ISO-8859-1, either way should do.