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

You can start getting the idea here java Charset API

Note that according to the doc,

The native character encoding of the Java programming language is UTF-16

EDIT :

sorry I got called away before I could finish this, maybe I shouldn't have posted the partial answer as it was. Anyway, the other answers explain the details, the point being that the native file charset for each platform together with common alternate charsets will be read correctly by java.