Why does the string "¿" get translated to "¿" when calling .getBytes()

Question

When writing the string "¿" out using

System.out.println(new String("¿".getBytes("UTF-8")));

¿ is written instead of just ¿.

WHY? And how do we fix it?

Answer 1

Sounds like the system console isn't in UTF-8

Answer 2

You need to specify the charset in the String constructor (see the API docs [can't link directly to the constructor, since the anchor seems to mess up SO's markup system]).

Answer 3

You don't have to use utf-16 to solve this:

new String("¿".getBytes("utf-8"), "utf-8");

works just fine; as long als the enconfig given to the getBytes method is the same as the encoding you pass to the constructor of string you should be fine!

Answer 4

Try:

System.out.println(new String("¿".getBytes("UTF-8"), "UTF-8"));

You need to specify the encoding both when converting the string to bytes and when converting the bytes back to a string.

Answer 5

See my reply to your other thread. But this:

new String("¿".getBytes("utf-8"), "utf-8");

...is junk code, completely pointless. It's just an expensive way to create a duplicate of the original string.