Locale-Sensitive Java Method

java.io.DataInputStream

public DataInputStream(InputStream in)

Internationalization (I18n) Method Overview

The DataInputStream class includes a method readLine(), which reads the next line of text from the underlying InputStream. It reads successive bytes, converting each byte separately into a character, until it encounters a line terminator or end of file. The characters read in are then returned as a Java String object.

I18n Issues

Because this class - via the readLine() method - attempts to convert each individual byte from the input stream into a two-byte UTF-16 character, it does not support input of the full Unicode character set. Each byte that is read is converted to a two-byte char type by zero-extension. Every character in this string will have a value less than \u0100, that is, (char)256.

Suggested Replacement

java.io.InputStreamReader
public InputStreamReader (InputStream in,
   String charsetName)
  throws UnsupportedEncodingException

Combined with:

java.io.BufferedReader
public String readLine()
   throws IOException

Instead of:

DataInputStream d = new DataInputStream(in);
String aLine = d.readLine();

Use:

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
    new InputStreamReader (in, charset));
String aLine = reader.readLine();