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javaencodingutf-8decodingutf-16

Detect (or best guess of) incoming string encoding in Java

I was wondering if there are known methods to detect (or give a best guess of) the encoding of a particular string in Java.

I know that you always need some additional meta-data to tell what the encoding is, and there are best practices etc., but the situation I'm in, I need to give the best approximation.

A solution -- or a pointer -- to programatically distinguishing between UTF-8 and UTF-16 is also welcome.

Solution

  • The utf-8 encoding should be easy to verify:

    UTF-8 strings can be fairly reliably recognized as such by a simple heuristic algorithm. from wikipedia

    Take a look at this site to see the algorithm