Java : How to determine the correct charset encoding of a stream

Question

With reference to the following thread: Java App : Unable to read iso-8859-1 encoded file correctly

What is the best way to programatically determine the correct cha

Answer 1

You can certainly validate the file for a particular charset by decoding it with a CharsetDecoder and watching out for "malformed-input" or "unmappable-character" errors. Of course, this only tells you if a charset is wrong; it doesn't tell you if it is correct. For that, you need a basis of comparison to evaluate the decoded results, e.g. do you know beforehand if the characters are restricted to some subset, or whether the text adheres to some strict format? The bottom line is that charset detection is guesswork without any guarantees.