How do I convert from ASCII String to UTF-8 String in Java?

Question

as titled, how do I convert an ASCII String to an UTF-8 String in Java?

Thanks!

Edit: My situation is really that I read in a Chinese String, and when I output it, it's all gibberish. I thought the problem might lie in the encoding. So, how do I properly convert the String from the gibberish to the proper language set characters?

possible duplicate of How to convert Strings to and from UTF8 byte arrays in Java and stackoverflow.com/questions/285228/… — Kazekage Gaara
– Kazekage Gaara, Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 9:15
Can you expand what do you need? Because in java all strings is by default UTF-16. (thanks Jon Skeet for correction) — ilalex
– ilalex, Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 9:17
(But ilya's point about your question being unclear is correct.) — Jon Skeet
– Jon Skeet, Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 9:18

Jon Skeet · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-23 09:17:06Z

4

There's no such thing as an "ASCII string" or a "UTF-8 string" in Java. By the time you've got a String object, it's just a sequence of UTF-16 code units. There's no record of whether it was originally decoded from a byte array using ASCII or UTF-8 to interpret the bytes.

Also note that UTF-8 is backward-compatible with ASCII, in that if you've got any valid sequence of bytes representing ASCII-encoded text, that's the same sequence of bytes that would be used to represent the same text in UTF-8.

answered Jun 23, 2012 at 9:17

Jon Skeet

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Mark Byers · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-23 09:18:06Z

2

There's no such thing as ASCII strings or UTF-8 strings in Java. ASCII and UTF-8 are encodings - byte arrays.

You do not need to do any conversion to go from an ASCII encoding of a string to a UTF-8 encoding of a string. Any valid ASCII is also valid UTF-8 encoding for the same string. (The reverse is not true).

answered Jun 23, 2012 at 9:18

Mark Byers

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