I ran the same program with two different versions of
Solaris 8 and I am getting different results. "sunpal" is
the Generic Solaris. kapital is the latest solaris 2.8.
I have verified this on two systems for each case testing
it on a total of four systems.

# uname -a
SunOS sunpal 5.8 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-4
# /opt/jdk/bin/java -version
java version "1.3.0"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.0)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.3.0, mixed mode)
# /opt/jdk/bin/java a | od -x
0000000 61c8 0a00
0000003



# uname -a
SunOS kapital 5.8 Generic_108528-03 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise
# /opt/jdk/bin/java -version
java version "1.3.0"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.0)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.3.0, mixed mode)
# /opt/jdk/bin/java DifferentAnswers | od -x
0000000 613f 0a00
0000003
# java -version
java version "1.2.2"
Solaris VM (build Solaris_JDK_1.2.2_06, native threads, sunwjit)
# java DifferentAnswers | od -x
0000000 61c8 0a00
0000003


The program:


/**
 * Two different Java VMs do not produce same result
 *
 *
 * @see
 *
 * @author Rinaldo Di Giorgio
 * @version %I%, %G%
 */
public class DifferentAnswers {
    public static final char rs = 200;

    /**
     * Print the results below and the expected answer is
     * a String with the value 0xC8 in it.
     *
     *
     * @param argv
     *
     * @see
     */
    public static void main(String argv[]) {
        System.out.println("a" + rs);
    }

}



=>java -version
java version "1.3.0"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.0)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.3.0, mixed mode)
69 bharadwaj (Srini) =>java DifferentAnswers
a?
70 bharadwaj (Srini) =>

javac DifferentAnswers.java
43 bharadwaj (Srini) =>java DifferentAnswers
aÈ
44 bharadwaj (Srini) =>java -version
java version "1.2.1"
Solaris VM (build Solaris_JDK_1.2.1_04c, native threads, sunwjit)
45 bharadwaj (Srini) =>