views:

229

answers:

2

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"?

+2  A: 

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=
gamma
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() ?
Epaga
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.
dimitko
1) You could use the system command "locale" and parse its output.
gamma
+1  A: 

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"));
Bozho
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.
Epaga
@Epaga - use a bat file or some wrapper for the jar?
Bozho