java.util.Properties and Cp1250

Question

Can I use java.util.Properties with encoding different then default?

Answer 1

Not unless you

1. are running java 6 or later
2. control the code loading the properties file, and can use a Reader. See the javadoc.

This is a pretty annoying flaw in the spec. There are several workarounds, probably the simplest being to auto-generate a unicode-escaped compliant .properties file from an encoding-appropriate (cp1250, utf-8, whatever) source.

Java ships with a transcoder called native2ascii to do this for you:

There are some aged RFEs on this subject:

• Provide UTF-8 based properties resource bundles - 2004
• Need a load(Reader)/store(Writer) interface for Properties class - 1997