Java: Problem With Greek File Names (non-latin file names)

Question

Hello,

Using Java: I am reading a directory containing files with Greek Names. But when i output a String containing a file name i get this '???????.something'.

Is it because i am running the java app. through the console?

Is there a way to get non-latin file names read correctly?

Thanks,

Answer 1

It could well be reading in the file names correctly; the most likely explanation is that your console can't render non-Latin characters.

For example, the following program is supposed to print out the first three letters of the Greek alphabet:

public class AlphaBetaGamma
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
     String abc = "\u03b1\u03b2\u03b3";
     System.out.println(abc);
    }
}

It prints out "???" on my Console, because it's not capable of rendering the Greek characters.

Answer 2

change your console to use utf-8 as char encoding - that should fix that issue

Answer 3

To add to what simonn wrote, it's worth writing out the Unicode code points with something like this:

public static void dumpString(String text)
{
    for (int i=0; i < text.length(); i++)
    {
        char c = text.charAt(i);
        System.out.printf("%c U+%04x", c, (int) c);
        System.out.println();
    }
}

You can then look at the Unicode web site to find out what those characters really mean. (The Code Charts page is very handy.)