CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaunicode
name_masked
name_masked

Reputation: 9793

Displaying special characters

I am running into issues when displaying special characters on the Windows console.

I have written the following code:

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    File newFile = new File("sampleInput.txt");
    File newOutFile = new File("sampleOutput.txt");

    FileReader read = new FileReader(newFile);
    FileWriter write = new FileWriter(newOutFile);
    PushbackReader reader = new PushbackReader(read);
    int c;

    while ((c = reader.read()) != -1)
    {
        write.write(c);
    }
    read.close();
    write.close();

}

The output file looks exactly what the input file would be containing special characters. i.e. for the contents in input file © Ø ŻƩ abcdefĦ, the output file contains exactly the same contents. But when I add the line System.out.printf("%c", (char) c), the contents on the console are:ÿþ©(containing more characters but I am not able to copy paste here). I did read that the issue might be with the Windows console character set, but not able to figure out the fix for it.

Considering the output medium can be anything in future, I do not want to run into issues with Unicode character display for any type of out stream.

Can anyone please help me understand the issue and how can I fix the same ?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1907

Answers (2)

Danny
Danny

Reputation: 7518

Instead of FileWriter try using OutputStreamWriter and specify the encoding of the output.

Upvotes: 1

BalusC
BalusC

Reputation: 1109635

The Reader and Writer will use the platform default charset for transforming characters to bytes. In your environment that's apparently not an Unicode compatible charset like UTF-8.

You need InputStreamReader and OutputStreamWriter wherein you can explicitly specify the charset.

Reader read = new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(newFile), "UTF-8"));
Writer write = new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(newOutFile), "UTF-8"));
// ...

Also, the console needs to be configured to use UTF-8 to display the characters. In for example Eclipse you can do that by Window > Preferences > General > Workspace > Text File Encoding.

In the command prompt console it's not possible to display those characters due to lack of a font supporting those characters. You'd like to head to a Swing-like UI console approach.

See also:

Upvotes: 5

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