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  1. JDK
  2. JDK-8183743

Umbrella: add overloads that take a Charset parameter

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    • Icon: Enhancement Enhancement
    • Resolution: Fixed
    • Icon: P3 P3
    • 10
    • None
    • core-libs
    • b36

      There are a variety of APIs in the libraries that convert byte[] to String and vice-versa, thus requiring use of a charset. Some APIs don't take any charset-related parameters at all, relying on the platform default charset or on a specified default (UTF-8). Some APIs take a charset name parameter (a String) which is inconvenient for a variety of reasons. All of these cases should have overloads added that take a Charset object as a parameter.

      For example, these APIs take a charset name:

          ByteArrayOutputStream.toString(csname)
          PrintStream(File, csname)
          PrintStream(filename, csname)
          PrintWriter(File, csname)
          PrintWriter(filename, csname)

      and are declared to throw UnsupportedEncodingException, which is checked, making them inconvenient to use. (Although UEE is a subtype of IOException, and calls to these often, but not always, occur in contexts where IOException is caught or declared.) Other APIs throw IllegalArgumentException if the charset name is invalid:

          Scanner(File, csname)
          ... other Scanner constructor overloads ...

      This is less inconvenient, however, for programmability, one always has to look up or remember the right name. (Is it "UTF_8" to be consistent with StandardCharsets.UTF_8? No, it's "UTF-8".)

      Still other APIs don't have any charset-related parameters at all:

          FileReader(File)
          FileReader(FileDescriptor)
          FileReader(filename)
          FileWriter(File)
          FileWriter(File, append)
          FileWriter(FileDescriptor)
          FileWriter(filename)
          FileWriter(filename, append)

      In all these cases an overload taking a Charset parameter should be added.

      This isn't an exhaustive list. The APIs should be audited for additional occurrences of APIs that have similar issues.

            joehw Joe Wang
            smarks Stuart Marks
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              Created:
              Updated:
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