Java Encoding from UTF8 to BIG5 - Some of the characters are displayed as "?"

[Dhinesh Kathirvel]

byte[] encoding1 = "康揚股份有限公司".getBytes("UTF-8");
String s1 = new String(encoding1,"BIG5");
System.out.println("String 1:"+s1);

String 1:摨瑟���∩遢�����砍��


While trying to change from UTF8 to Big5 some of the characters are displayed as "?"
I understand those characters are not present in the character set.
Is there any other option to generate in Traditional Chinese version ?

[Stephan van Hulst]

Welcome to CodeRanch!

You're not changing UTF-8 to Big5. You're encoding a String (which under the hood MAY use a combination of a byte array and an encoding, usually UTF-16) as UTF-8, and then interpreting your UTF-8 byte array as Big5, which obviously is not going to work.

Remember, String represent a sequence of characters, and character do not have an encoding. Characters can be encoded to a sequence of bytes, which DO have an encoding.

If you want to encode your string to Big5, all you have to do is "康揚股份有限公司".getBytes(Charset.forName("BIG5"));

If you want to change the encoding of an UTF-8 encoded String to Big5, you do:

private static final Charset BIG5 = Charset.forName("BIG5");
private static final Charset UTF8 = Charset.forName("UTF-8");

...

byte[] utf8Encoded = ... ;

String decoded = new String(utf8Encoded, UTF8);

byte[] big5Encoded = decoded.getBytes(BIG5);