Setting the default Java character encoding

Question

How do I properly set the default character encoding used by the JVM (1.5.x) programmatically?

I have read that -Dfile.encoding=whatever used to be the

Answer 1

Following @Caspar comment on accepted answer, the preferred way to fix this according to Sun is :

"change the locale of the underlying platform before starting your Java program."

http://bugs.java.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=4163515

For docker see:

http://jaredmarkell.com/docker-and-locales/