j_mcd,
Unicode is a 16-bit international character set standard which consists of a standard 8-bit subset that corresponds to the older ASCII and Latin-1 character sets (the ones most commonly used under DOS).
UTF-8 is the standard encoding name used to identify text stored as Unicode 8-bit characters. UTF-16 is the standard encoding name used to identify text stored as Unicode 16-bit characters.
If you use a Win/DOS based system, the source files you create will most likely be saved as 8-bit characters. Java translates these into 16-bit Unicode before processing the source file.
Hope that helps.
PS Please read the
JavaRanch Name Policy and re-register using a name that complies with the rules.
Thanks for your cooperation.
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Jane Griscti
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java� 2 Platform