Java: How to detect (and change?) encoding of System.console?

Question

I have a program which runs on a console and its Umlauts and other special characters are being output as ?'s on Macs. Here's a simple test program:

public static void main( String[] args ) {
    System.out.println("höhößüä");
    System.console().printf( "höhößüä" );
}

On a default Mac console (with default UTF-8 encoding), this prints:

 h?h????
 h?h????

But after manually setting the Mac terminal's encoding to "Mac OS Roman", it correctly printed

 höhößüä
 höhößüä

Note that on Windows systems using System.console() works:

 h÷h÷▀³õ
 höhößüä

So how do I make my program...rolleyes..."run everywhere"?

Bozho · Accepted Answer · 2010-03-10 09:46:41Z

13

Try the following command-line argument when starting your application:

-Dfile.encoding=utf-8

This changes the default encoding of the JVM for I/O operations.

You can also try:

System.setOut(new PrintStream(System.out, true, "utf-8"));

edited Mar 10, 2010 at 9:46

answered Mar 10, 2010 at 9:15

Bozho

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4 Comments

John Goering Over a year ago

problem with this is that I'm shipping this console program as a jar, so I'm looking for a solution that doesn't involve the user having to add his own command line arguments.

Bozho Over a year ago

@Epaga - use a bat file or some wrapper for the jar?

n0rmzzz Over a year ago

-Dfile.encoding=utf-8 is not a standard option and should be avoided.

theyuv Over a year ago

@Bozho The second option helped for being able to print utf-8 (hebrew) to my console. However, my ultimate problem is mapping of servlet url patterns. When using hebrew urls in the url patterns the mappings are displayed (I checked on jconsole MBeans) as gibberish. I thought that fixing the console printing would also fix the mappings but it doesn't. Do you have any other suggestions?

gamma · Accepted Answer · 2010-03-10 09:38:43Z

10

Epaga: have a look right here. You can set the output encoding in a printstream - just have to determine or be absolutely sure about which is being set.

import java.io.PrintStream;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;

public class Test {
    public static void main (String[] argv) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
    String unicodeMessage =
    "\u7686\u3055\u3093\u3001\u3053\u3093\u306b\u3061\u306f";

    PrintStream out = new PrintStream(System.out, true, "UTF-8");
    out.println(unicodeMessage);
  }
}

To determine the console encoding you could use the system command "locale" and parse the output which - on a german UTF-8 system looks like:

LANG="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_CTYPE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

edited Mar 10, 2010 at 9:38

answered Mar 10, 2010 at 9:10

gamma

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3 Comments

John Goering Over a year ago

2 problems: 1) how do I know which encoding is set in the console? 2) is there any way to still work with System.console() ?

dimitarvp Over a year ago

No, you cannot retain your code using System.console(), and I don't perceive it critical. PrintStream also has everything you want and it does work properly. +1 for the answer from me.

gamma Over a year ago

1) You could use the system command "locale" and parse its output.

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