Java Unicode Confusion

Question

HEy all, I have only just started attempting to learn Java and have run into something that is really confusing!

I was typing out an example from the book I am using

Answer 1

It's a well-known problem with console encoding mismatch on Windows platforms.

Java Runtime expects that encoding used by the system console is the same as the system default encoding. However, Windows uses two separate encodings: ANSI code page (system default encoding) and OEM code page (console encoding).

So, when you try to write Unicode character U+00AB LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK to the console, Java runtime expects that console encoding is the ANSI encoding (that is Windows-1252 in your case), where this Unicode character is represented as 0xAB. However, the actual console encoding is the OEM encoding (CP437 in your case), where 0xAB means ½.

Therefore printing data to Windows console with System.out.println() produces wrong results.

To get correct results you can use System.console().writer().println() instead.