Adding non printable chars to a string in Java?

Question

I need to add some non printable chars to a string in java so it can be sent down a tcp pipe. the chars mean something to the protocol I am using (record separator and end o

Answer 1

If you wish, you can write these as Unicode literals (in chars or Strings):

final String endOfText = "\u0003";

• Unicode charts
• Java Language Specification Lexical Structure chapter

I am assuming that you don't literally want ASCII for a byte-based protocol (the chars are still 16 bits).

Answer 2

public final class ProtocolConstants {
    public final char RECORD_SEPARATOR = 0x1e;
    public final char END_OF_TEXT = 0x03;

    private ProtocolConstants() {}
}

something like that?

Answer 3

You can add any chars to a Java String. But a String is probably not what you want if you just want to transmit binary data. Consider using a byte[] or some other byte-oriented interface.