Java printing stray character instead of actual

Question

I have a simple java program that reads a line from file and writes it to another file.

My source file has words like: it's but the destination file is having words like it�s.

I am using BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inputFile)); to read the source file and PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(resultFile, "UTF-8"); to write the destination file.

How to get the actual character in my destination file too?

You are probably using the wrong charset to read the file; given that you don't specify one, it is the JVM's default which will be used (which is implementation- and platform-dependent). — fge, Mar 20 '14 at 16:17
Use the appropriate `FileReader` constructor as mentioned in the answer — fge, Mar 20 '14 at 16:25
possible duplicate of [Java FileReader encoding issue](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/696626/java-filereader-encoding-issue) — Steve Benett, Mar 20 '14 at 16:25

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 20 '14 at 16:21

2

You need to specify a CharacterSet when creating the BufferedReader, otherwise the platform default encoding is used:

BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inputFile),"UTF-8");

answered Mar 20 '14 at 16:21

Steven Pessall

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5
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1

Using Java 7 this can be written `Files.newBufferedReader(Paths.get(inputFile), StandardCharsets.UTF_8)`. – fge Mar 20 '14 at 16:25
I tried as mentioned in answer, but it is giving error `Incompatible type: string can not be converted into int` – user3392464 Mar 20 '14 at 16:38
At what line does that exception occur? Could you add more of your code (i.e. the method, which performs the reading and writing) in your question? – Steven Pessall Mar 24 '14 at 06:58

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 18 '16 at 07:18

I know this question is a bit old, but I thought I'd put down my answer anyway.

You can use java.nio.file.Files to read the file and java.io.RandomAccessFile to write to your destination file. For example:

public void copyContentsOfFile(File source, File destination){
    Path p = Paths.get(source.toURI());
    try {
        byte[] bytes = Files.readAllBytes(p);
        RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile(destination, "rw");
        raf.writeBytes(new String(bytes));
        raf.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

Java printing stray character instead of actual

2 Answers2