read from console an array with special characters

Question

I'm trying this:

Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);
char[] character = keyboard.next().toCharArray();
while (character.length != 5) {
     keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);
     character = keyboard.next().toCharArray();
}

Until you introduce 5 character keeps asking you to introduce the 5 characters again but when i try to introduce the special characters 'ñ' or 'ç' it doesn't work, i have tried it without the while to print the results and the only thing that prints are squares . How could this be solved?

I'm using NetBeans IDE 7.4.

By it doesn't work I mean I just keep asking to introduce more characters and it is just stuck until you introduce 5 normal characters.

Looks like your console doesn't support non ASCII characters. Which environment are you using to execute your Java application? — Luiggi Mendoza, Sep 11 '14 at 15:30
Cant explain how to configure the Console encoding without knowing the IDE — ortis, Sep 11 '14 at 15:33
@ortis any decent IDE like those you mentioned won't have this problem. Surely the code is executed through command line or another kind of console or a very old OS. — Luiggi Mendoza, Sep 11 '14 at 15:34
@Luiggi Mendoza Unless you hardcode special character (wich will set the encoding on UTF8 by default) you will get some *square* when trying to output in the console. There is countless issue on SO about people reading a file with special char and getting weird symbol instead. — ortis, Sep 11 '14 at 15:39
@ortis I know but that's for Chinese, Japanese and Arabic characters. Using Spanish character `ñ` is not a common issue in console apps. — Luiggi Mendoza, Sep 11 '14 at 15:41
@Luiggi Mendoza Yes it is :) I just tried it on Eclipse and got *Ã±* — ortis, Sep 11 '14 at 15:42
@LuiggiMendoza not all extended ASCII character sets have a codepoint for ñ — phuclv, Sep 11 '14 at 15:50
@LưuVĩnhPhúc well, seems like I didn't know about them :) — Luiggi Mendoza, Sep 11 '14 at 15:52

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 11 '14 at 15:57

Use in both cases the encoding of your operating system.

String encoding = "Cp1252"; // Western Latin-1
Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in, encoding); // Twice!

If you print the default encoding:

System.out.println(System.getProperty("file.encoding"));

You will probably see, that the IDE uses "UTF-8" or so. That is, it has changed file.encoding. System.in and System.out however need to use just the original encoding.

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:05

1

You might want to check this answer.

Edit the netbeans.conf in the etc folder of NetBean and add -J-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 to netbeans_default_options. Then restart.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:05

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answered Sep 11 '14 at 15:58

ortis

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read from console an array with special characters

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