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Storing hindi in lang.properties in java and retrieving it

I want to read hindi text from lang.properties(JAVA.util.properties) file.
I am using eclipse IDE.
First of all how can I save(or write) hindi letter in .properties file
Secondly how to read the string from my java class.
lang.properties
hindiText=साहिलसाहिल
Java Class
Properties prop = new Properties();
prop.load(MyCalss.class.getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("lang.properties"));
String hindi=prop.getProperty("hindiText");
It's not working.

As documented, Properties.load(InputStream) will always use the ISO-8859-1 encoding, and that encoding doesn't handle the characters you're interested in.
Options:
Wrap your stream in an InputStreamReader and specify the encoding explicitly
Use Unicode escaping (e.g \u1234) in the file for any characters not in ISO-8859-1 (and make sure the file is saved as ISO-8859-1)

Error when reading non-English language character from file

I am building an app where users have to guess a secret word. I have *.txt files in assets folder. The problem is that words are in Albanian language. Our language uses letters like "ë" and "ç", so whenever I try to read from the file some word containing any of those characters I get some wicked symbol and I can not implement string.compare() for these characters. I have tried many options with UTF-8, changed Eclipse setting but still the same error.
I wold really appreciate if someone has got any advice.
The code I use to read the files is:
AssetManager am = getAssets();
strOpenFile = "fjalet.txt";
InputStream fins = am.open(strOpenFile);
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins));
ArrayList<String> stringList = new ArrayList<String>();
while ((aDataRow = reader.readLine()) != null) {
aBuffer += aDataRow + "\n";
stringList.add(aDataRow);
}
Otherwise the code works fine, except for mentioned characters

It seems pretty clear that the default encoding that is in force when you create the InputStreamReader does not match the file.
If the file you are trying to read is UTF-8, then this should work:
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins, "UTF-8"));
If the file is not UTF-8, then that won't work. Instead you should use the name of the file's true encoding. (My guess is that it is in ISO/IEC_8859-1 or ISO/IEC_8859-16.)
Once you have figured out what the file's encoding really is, you need to try to understand why it does not correspond to your Java platform's default encoding ... and then make a pragmatic decision on what to do about it. (Should you hard-wire the encoding into your application ... as above? Should you make it a configuration property or command parameter? Should you change the default encoding? Should you change the file?)

You need to determine the character encoding that was used when creating the file, and specify this encoding when reading it. If it's UTF-8, for example, use
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins, "UTF-8"));
or
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins, StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
if you're under Java 7.
Text editors like Notepad++ have good heuristics to guess what the encoding of a file is. Try opening it with such an editor and see which encoding it has guessed (if the characters appear correctly).

You should know encoding of the file.
InputStream class reads file binary. Although you can interpet input as character, it will be implicit guessing, which may be wrong.
InputStreamReader class converts binary to chars. But it should know character set.
You should use the following version to feed it by character set.
UPDATE
Don't suggest you have UTF-8 encoded file, which may be wrong. Here in Russia we have such encodings as CP866, WIN1251 and KOI8, which are all differ from UTF8. Probably you have some popular Albanian encoding of text files. Check your OS setting to guess.

How will append a utf-8 string to a properties file

How will append a utf-8 string to a properties file. I have given the code below.
public static void addNewAppIdToRootFiles() {
Properties properties = new Properties();
try {
FileInputStream fin = new FileInputStream("C:\Users\sarika.sukumaran\Desktop\root\root.properties");
properties.load(new InputStreamReader(fin, Charset.forName("UTF-8")));
String propertyStr = new String(("قسيمات").getBytes("iso-8859-1"), "UTF-8");
BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(directoryPath + rootFiles, true));
bw.write(propertyStr);
bw.newLine();
bw.flush();
bw.close();
fin.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
System.out.println("Exception : " + e);
}
}
But when I open the file, the string I have written "قسيمات" to the file shows as "??????". Please help me.

OK, your first mistake is getBytes("iso-8859-1"). You should not do these manipulations at all. If you want to write unicode text to file you should open the file and write text. The internal representations of strings in java is unicdoe, so everything will be writter correctly.
You have to care about charset when you are reading file. BTW you do it correctly.
But you do not have to use file manipulation tools to append something to properites file. You can just call prop.setProperty("yourkey", "yourvalue") and then call prop.store(new FileOutputStream(youfilename)).

Ok, I have checked the specification for Properties class. If you use following methods: load() for input stream or store() for output stream, the input/output stream for the file is assumed a iso-8859-1 encoding by default. Therefore, you have to be cautious with a few things:
Some characters in French, German and Portuguese are iso-8859-1 (Latin1) compatible, which they normally work fine in iso-8859-1. So, you don't have to worry that much. But, others like Arabic and Hebrew characters are not Latin1 compatible, so you need to be careful with the choice of encoding for these characters. If you have a mix of characters of French and Arabic, you have no choice but to use Unicode.
What is your current input file's encoding if it already exists to be used with Properties's load() method? If it is not the default iso-8859-1, then you need to figure out what it is first before opening the file. If infile file encoding is UTF-8, then use properties.load(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream("infile"), "UTF8"))); Then, stick to this encoding till the end. Match the file encoding with the character encoding as well.
If it is a new input file to be used with Properties's load() method, choose the file encoding that works with your character's encoding. Then, stick to this encoding till the end.
Your expected output file's encoding shall be the same with what is used from Properties's load() method before you use the store() method. If it is not the default iso-8859-1, then you need to figure out what it is first before saving the file. Stick to this encoding till the end. Match the file encoding with the character encoding as well. If outfile file encoding is UTF-8, then specifically use UTF-8 encoding when saving the file. But, if the store() method still ends up with an outfile in iso-8859-1 encoding, then you need to do what is suggested next...
If you stick to the default iso-8859-1, it works fine for characters like French. But, if the characters are not iso-8859-1 or Latin1 encoding compatible, you need to use Unicode escape characters instead as an alternative: for example:\uFE94 for the Arabic ﺔ character. For me, this escaping is too tedious and normally we use native2ascii utility provided in JRE or JDK to convert a properties file from one encoding to another encoding. Of course, there are other ways...just check the references below...For me, it is better to use a properties file in XML format since by default it is UTF-8...
References:
Java properties UTF-8 encoding in Eclipse
Setting the default Java character encoding?

Spanish character óé display error in Java properties

When I process a properties file with the Spanish characters ó and é, characters are displayed as ?. I tried different ways to fix this, but still fail:
I tried to use \uxxxx
I tried to use InputStreamReader with encoding UTF-8
I tried to convert string to bytes and then create a new String from those bytes:
new String( val.getBytes("UTF-8"), "UTF-8")
Nothing worked. What should I do next to fix this issue? Japanese and Russian are still OK.

The properties file needs to be in the proper encoding. By default some IDE's like eclipse saves the content using CP1252 but you are requiring the file as UTF-8. This is also required for your java code.
If you try to use \uxxxx characters but your application by default is working with CP1252 the conversion of the escape code result in a bad character.
If you use the InputStreamReader to force the reading as UTF-8 but your code and/or your file are not using UTF-8 support result in a bad character.
If you use UTF-8 conversion of an string but your source code is CP1252 you should have the same problem.
Related previous answer about source code : Should source code be saved in UTF-8 format
Notepad ++ Has a menu to view the format of the file and change it in "Format" menu you should view the file as if it should be opened by other formarts or you should convert the file to other file formats like "UTF-8"

Convert from Codepage 1252 (Windows) to Java, in Java

I have some strings in Java (originally from an Excel sheet) that I presume are in Windows 1252 codepage. I want them converted to Javas own unicode format. The Excel file was parsed using the JXL package, in case that matter.
I will clarify: apparently the strings gotten from the Excel file look pretty much like it already is some kind of unicode.
WorkbookSettings ws = new WorkbookSettings();
ws.setCharacterSet(someInteger);
Workbook workbook = Workbook.getWorkbook(new File(filename), ws);
Sheet s = workbook.getSheet(sheet);
row = s.getRow(4);
String contents = row[0].getContents();
This is where contents seems to contain something unicode, the åäö are multibyte characters, while the ASCII ones are normal single byte characters. It is most definitely not Latin1. If I print the "contents" string with printLn and redirect it to a hello.txt file, I find that the letter "ö" is represented with two bytes, C3 B6 in hex. (195 and 179 in decimal.)
[edit]
I have tried the suggestions with different codepages etc given below, tried converting from Cp1252 etc. There was some kind of conversion, because I would get some other kind of gibberish instead. As reference I always printed an "ö" string hand coded into the source code, to verify that there was not something wrong with my terminal or typefaces or anything. The manually typed "ö" always worked.
[edit]
I also tried WorkBookSettings as suggested in the comments, but I looked in the code for JXL and characterSet seems to be ignored by parsing code. I think the parsing code just looks at whatever encoding the XLS file is supposed to be in.

WorkbookSettings ws = new WorkbookSettings();
ws.setEncoding("CP1250");
Worked for me.

If none of the answer above solve the problem, the trick might be done like this:
String myOutput = new String (myInput, "UTF-8");
This should decode the incoming string, whatever its format.

When Java parses a file it uses some encoding to read the bytes on the disk and create bytes in memory. The default encoding varies from platform to platform. Java's internal String representation is Unicode already, so if it parses the file with the right encoding then you are already done; just write out the data in any encoding you want.
If your strings appear corrupted when you look at them in Java, it is probably because you are using the wrong encoding to read the data. Excel is probably using UTF-16 (Little-Endian I think) but I'd expect a library like JXL should be able to detect it appropriately. I've looked at the Javadocs for JXL and it doesn't do anything with character encodings. I imagine it auto-detects any encodings as it needs to.
Do you just need to write the already loaded strings to a text file? If so, then something like the following will work:
String text = getCP1252Text(); // doesn't matter what the original encoding was, Java always uses Unicode
FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("test.txt"); // Open file
OutputStreamWriter osw = new OutputStreamWriter(fos, "UTF-16"); // Specify character encoding
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(osw);
pw.print(text ); // repeat as needed
pw.close(); // cleanup
osw.close();
fos.close();
If your problem is something else please edit your question and provide more details.

You need to specify the correct encoding when the file is parsed - once you have a Java String based on the wrong encoding, it's too late.
JXL allows you to specify the encoding by passing a WorkbookSettings object to the factory method.

"windows-1252"/"Cp1252" is not required to be supported by JREs, but is by Sun's (and presumably most others). See the "Supported Encodings" in your JDK documentation. Then it's just a matter of using String, InputStreamReader or similar to decode the bytes into chars.

FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream (yourFile);
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fis,"CP1250"));
And do with reader whatever you'd do directly with file.

Your description indicates that the encoding is UTF-8 and indeed C3 B6 is the UTF-8 encoding for 'ö'.