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| <!doctype html public "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN"> |
| <html> |
| <body bgcolor="white"> |
| |
| |
| Defines charsets, decoders, and encoders, for translating between bytes and |
| Unicode characters. |
| |
| <blockquote><table cellspacing=1 cellpadding=0 summary="Summary of charsets, decoders, and encoders in this package"> |
| <tr><th><p align="left">Class name</p></th><th><p align="left">Description</p></th></tr> |
| <tr><td valign=top><tt>{@link java.nio.charset.Charset}</tt></td> |
| <td>A named mapping between characters<br>and bytes</td></tr> |
| <tr><td valign=top><tt>{@link java.nio.charset.CharsetDecoder}</tt></td> |
| <td>Decodes bytes into characters</td></tr> |
| <tr><td valign=top><tt>{@link java.nio.charset.CharsetEncoder} </tt></td> |
| <td>Encodes characters into bytes</td></tr> |
| <tr><td valign=top><tt>{@link java.nio.charset.CoderResult} </tt></td> |
| <td>Describes coder results</td></tr> |
| <tr><td valign=top><tt>{@link java.nio.charset.CodingErrorAction} </tt></td> |
| <td>Describes actions to take when<br>coding errors are detected</td></tr> |
| |
| </table></blockquote> |
| |
| <p> A <i>charset</i> is named mapping between sequences of sixteen-bit Unicode |
| characters and sequences of bytes, in the sense defined in <a |
| href="http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc2278.txt"><i>RFC 2278</i></a>. A |
| <i>decoder</i> is an engine which transforms bytes in a specific charset into |
| characters, and an <i>encoder</i> is an engine which transforms characters into |
| bytes. Encoders and decoders operate on byte and character buffers. They are |
| collectively referred to as <i>coders</i>. |
| |
| <p> The {@link java.nio.charset.Charset} class defines methods for creating |
| coders for a given charset and for retrieving the various names associated with |
| a charset. It also defines static methods for testing whether a particular |
| charset is supported, for locating charset instances by name, and for |
| constructing a map that contains every charset for which support is available |
| in the current Java virtual machine. |
| |
| <p> Most users will not use these classes directly; instead they will use the |
| existing charset-related constructors and methods in the {@link |
| java.lang.String} class, together with the existing {@link |
| java.io.InputStreamReader} and {@link java.io.OutputStreamWriter} classes, all |
| of whose implementations have been reworked to make use of the charset |
| facilities defined in this package. A small number of changes have been made |
| to the {@link java.io.InputStreamReader} and {@link java.io.OutputStreamWriter} |
| classes in order to allow explicit charset objects to be specified in the |
| construction of instances of those classes. |
| |
| <p> Support for new charsets can be made available via the interface defined in |
| the {@link java.nio.charset.spi.CharsetProvider} class in the <tt>{@link |
| java.nio.charset.spi}</tt> package. |
| |
| <p> Unless otherwise noted, passing a <tt>null</tt> argument to a constructor |
| or method in any class or interface in this package will cause a {@link |
| java.lang.NullPointerException NullPointerException} to be thrown. |
| |
| |
| @since 1.4 |
| @author Mark Reinhold |
| @author JSR-51 Expert Group |
| |
| </body> |
| </html> |
