Java: Readers and Encodings

Question

Java\'s default encoding is ASCII. Yes? (See my edit below)

When a textfile is encoded in UTF-8? How does a Reader know that he has to use

Answer 1

Java's default encoding depends on your OS. For Windows, it's normally "windows-1252", for Unix it's typically "ISO-8859-1" or "UTF-8".

A reader knows the correct encoding because you tell it the correct encoding. Unfortunately, not all readers let you do this (for example, FileReader doesn't), so often you have to use an InputStreamReader.