Java Character Encoding

Question

I have a text file having some Hindi characters and my default character encoding in ISO 8859-1. I am using "FileInputStream" to read the data from that file and "FileOutputStream" to write data to another text file.

My code is:

    FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("D:/input.txt");
    int i = -1;
    FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("D:/outputNew.txt");
    while((i = fis.read())!= -1){
        fos.write(i);
    }
    fos.flush();
    fos.close();
    fis.close();

I am not specifying encoding ("UTF-8") anywhere, but still the output file in having proper text.How it is happening , i am not getting?

Your system default charset is Latin-1, but what's Java's default charset...? — Makoto
– Makoto, Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 16:45
@Makoto : How to find Java's default charset, i am using "Charset.defaultCharset()" which is printing "ISO-8859-1"? — Ritesh Kaushik
– Ritesh Kaushik, Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 16:53

JB Nizet · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-15 16:46:47Z

8

It's working because you don't use any char in your program. You're just transferring raw bytes from one file to another. It would be a problem if you read and wrote characters, because then an encoding would be used to transform the bytes in the files to characters, and vice-versa.

answered Dec 15, 2012 at 16:46

JB Nizet

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2 Comments

Ritesh Kaushik Over a year ago

Even if i am using "reader" and "writer", i am getting the same problem i.e. I am not specifying encoding ("UTF-8") anywhere, but still the output file in having proper text.

JB Nizet Over a year ago

That means that you're lucky to have bytes in the file which represent Indi characters encoded in UTF-8, and that these bytes happen to also represent valid characters encoded in latin-1. A bit like if you had an email written in English that uses only words that also exist in French.

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