strange characters when opening a properties file - encoding

Question

I have a requirement to update a properties file for a very old project, the properties file is supposed to display Arabic characters but it displays somthing like that "Êã ÊÓÌíá ØáÈßã", i wrote a simple program from which i was able to read the correct Arabic values from the file,
Reader r = new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream("C:\\Labels_ar.properties"), "Windows-1256");
buffered = new BufferedReader(r);
String line;
while ((line = buffered.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println("line" + line);
}
but do u have any idea on how i can open the file, edit and save the new changes?

Answer 1

If, as you seem to think, the encoding is Windows-1256, there are editors that will do the job, such as EditPadLite.
If it's not that, the first thing you need to find out is the encoding. Given it's a properties file, it may well be UTF-8 but the easiest way to find out is to get a hex dump of the file and post it here. Under Linux, I'd normally suggest using:
od -xcb Labels_ar.properties
but, given you're on Windows, that's not going to work so well (unless you have CygWin installed).
So, if you have your own favourite hex dump program, just use that. Otherwise you can use the following Powershell one:
function Pf-Dump-Hex-Item([byte[]] $data) {
$left = "+0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +A +B +C +D +E +F"
$right = "0123456789ABCDEF"
Write-Output "======== $left +$right"
$addr = 0
$left = "{0:X8} " -f $addr
$right = ""
# Now go through the input bytes
foreach ($byte in $bytes) {
# Add 2-digit hex number then filtered character.
$left += "{0:x2} " -f $byte
if (($byte -lt 0x20) -or ($byte -gt 0x7e)) { $byte = "." }
$right += [char] $byte
# Increment address and start new line if needed.
$addr++;
if (($addr % 16) -eq 0) {
Write-Output "$left $right"
$left = "{0:X8} " -f $addr
$right = "";
}
}
# Flush last line if needed.
$lastLine = "{0:X8}" -f $addr
if (($addr % 16) -ne 0) {
while (($addr % 16) -ne 0) {
$left += " "
$addr++;
}
Write-Output "$left $right"
}
Write-Output $lastLine
Write-Output ""
}
function Pf-Dump-Hex {
param(
[Parameter (Mandatory = $false, Position = 0)]
[string] $Path,
[Parameter (Mandatory = $false, ValueFromPipeline = $true)]
[Object] $Object
)
begin {
Set-StrictMode -Version Latest
# Create the array to hold content then do path if given.
[byte[]] $bytes = $null
if ($Path) {
$bytes = [IO.File]::ReadAllBytes((Resolve-Path $Path))
Pf-Dump-Hex-Item $bytes
}
}
process {
# Process each object (input/pipe).
if ($object) {
foreach ($obj in $object) {
if ($obj -is [Byte]) {
$bytes = $obj
} else {
$inpStr = [string] $obj
$bytes = [Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetBytes($inpStr)
}
Pf-Dump-Hex-Item $bytes
}
}
}
}
If you load that into a Powershell session then run:
pf-dump-hex Labels_ar.properties
that should allow you to evaluate the file encoding.

Answer 2

I think there are two problems :
1- Im not sure if System.out.println() can print arabic characters, so try another method like MessageBox.show() to be sure there is a problem with reading file.
2- If MessageBox.show() shows same result, the problem should be the charset, you can try UTF-8 or somthing else.