CODEWITHSUNDEEP
java
Usman Riaz
Usman Riaz

Reputation: 3020

Getting little boxes instead of actual characters

I am reading a stream using inputStream. The code is below

buffer = new byte[8];
try {
    while (inputStream.available() > 0) {
        int numBytes = inputStream.read(buffer);
        System.out.println(new String(buffer, 0, numBytes));
    }
} catch (Exception ex) {
    ex.printStackTrace();
}

But instead of getting characters i am getting somewhat like below

enter image description here

What are these and how can get actual characters.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 278

Answers (2)

Brian Agnew
Brian Agnew

Reputation: 272347

You're reading bytes and naively translating into strings. That works in a simple scenario, but bytes make up characters in different combinations. This is called character encoding, and I suspect you're running into issues wrt. this.

At a minimum, you need to determine the original encoding of the file you're reading, and provide this encoding as a constructor argument to the String. This will tell String how to translate an array of bytes to an array of characters (and hence a string)

See this document for more info on encodings.

Upvotes: 3

Bathsheba
Bathsheba

Reputation: 234795

You need to supply the appropriate character set argument to the String constructor. (That's the 4th argument - missing in your code - and has the wrong default for your data.)

Otherwise the String will misinterpret your data.

You may well find that

java.nio.charset.Charset.forName("UTF-8")

is the one you need.

Upvotes: 4

Related Questions