I dont understand the file.encoding parameter

Question

Im running Windows Vista and using Intellij Jetbrans.
I have a file with the name divisionǿ (In case not displayed this is unicode charcter \u01ff) the filename displays fine on In Windows Explorer, and fine within my programs gui, but on StandardOut File.getName() returns it as division?
Why does it show the question mark, when it can display it ok in a Jtable within the program.
Also, jetbrains runs with -Dfile.encoding=windows-1252, ( i didnt set this myself). What does this option actually refer to:
The format that java text files files are encoded in
The format filenames are encoded in
or something else
This isnt just an academic question, it is causing a problem when creating a file and trying to create a script, because it is putting the line with the ? rather than the real charcter in it.
thanks for any help Paul

Answer 1

paultaylor wrote:
The format that java text files files are encoded inThat's the one, but it's much more than that. Any time your program converts bytes to chars or vice versa, it will use the system default encoding unless you specify something else.
The default encoding on a Windows machine is windows-1252 (or 125-something else, for other locales), and it doesn't support the ǿ character. If you really want to use that character, you should either use Unicode escapes (e.g., \u01ff), or save your source files as UTF-8. If you do save it as UTF-8, you'll also have to specify the encoding when you compile your code.
However, you still won't be able to display that character on the command line, because its default encoding (cp437 on my machine) doesn't support that character either, and you don't have the option of switching to UTF-8.