Defines charsets, decoders, and encoders, for translating between bytes and
Unicode characters.
Class name | Description |
|---|
| {@link java.nio.charset.Charset} |
A named mapping between characters
and bytes |
| {@link java.nio.charset.CharsetDecoder} |
Decodes bytes into characters |
| {@link java.nio.charset.CharsetEncoder} |
Encodes characters into bytes |
| {@link java.nio.charset.CoderResult} |
Describes coder results |
| {@link java.nio.charset.CodingErrorAction} |
Describes actions to take when
coding errors are detected |
A charset is named mapping between sequences of sixteen-bit Unicode
characters and sequences of bytes, in the sense defined in RFC 2278. A
decoder is an engine which transforms bytes in a specific charset into
characters, and an encoder is an engine which transforms characters into
bytes. Encoders and decoders operate on byte and character buffers. They are
collectively referred to as coders.
The {@link java.nio.charset.Charset} class defines methods for creating
coders for a given charset and for retrieving the various names associated with
a charset. It also defines static methods for testing whether a particular
charset is supported, for locating charset instances by name, and for
constructing a map that contains every charset for which support is available
in the current Java virtual machine.
Most users will not use these classes directly; instead they will use the
existing charset-related constructors and methods in the {@link
java.lang.String} class, together with the existing {@link
java.io.InputStreamReader} and {@link java.io.OutputStreamWriter} classes, all
of whose implementations have been reworked to make use of the charset
facilities defined in this package. A small number of changes have been made
to the {@link java.io.InputStreamReader} and {@link java.io.OutputStreamWriter}
classes in order to allow explicit charset objects to be specified in the
construction of instances of those classes.
Support for new charsets can be made available via the interface defined in
the {@link java.nio.charset.spi.CharsetProvider} class in the {@link
java.nio.charset.spi} package.
Unless otherwise noted, passing a null argument to a constructor
or method in any class or interface in this package will cause a {@link
java.lang.NullPointerException NullPointerException} to be thrown.
@since 1.4
@version 1.8, 07/05/05
@author Mark Reinhold
@author JSR-51 Expert Group
|