Encoding cp-1252 as utf-8?

Question

I am trying to write a Java app that will run on a linux server but that will process files generated on legacy Windows machines using cp-1252 as the character set. Is there

Answer 1

You can read and write text data in any encoding that you wish. Here's a quick code example:

  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
  {
    // List all supported encodings
    for (String cs : Charset.availableCharsets().keySet())
      System.out.println(cs);

    File file = new File("SomeWindowsFile.txt");
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();

    // Construct a reader for a specific encoding
    Reader reader = new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(file), "windows-1252");
    while (reader.ready())
    {
      builder.append(reader.read());
    }
    reader.close();

    String string = builder.toString();

    // Construct a writer for a specific encoding
    Writer writer = new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(file), "UTF8");
    writer.write(string);
    writer.flush();
    writer.close();
  }

If this still 'chokes' on read, see if you can verify that the the original encoding is what you think it is. In this case I've specified windows-1252, which is the java string for cp-1252.