Java IO for different file encodings

Question

Hi,
I need a file reading mechanism, wherein i should be able to read files of just about any encoding (eg Shift JIS, EBCDIC, UTF, Unicode, etc).
I could do this using the following code:
               FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("D:\\FMSStub\\ZENMES2.txt");
               InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader( fis, "Unicode");
               BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader( isr );
               br.read(c1);
But there is a requirement in our code, to also read some trailers from the file and go back and again read from the middle of the file. Basically a seek kind of functionality.
I have been desperately trying to figure out how i can do seek (which is possible with RandomAccessFile, but RandomAccessFile wont work with all the various encodings...i have tried this) with the above kind of code.
Any information on this would be very useful.
Regards,
Mallika.

Answer 1

Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
But as you say, when i do a new String(byte[], "encoding") my String does not get formed.
The case which i tried was a unicode file.
I read first few bytes and formed a string as follows:
     byte blfilestr[] = new byte[1000];
               ra = new RandomAccessFile("D:\\FMSStub\\ZENMES2.txt","r");               
     ra.seek(0);
     int ilrd = ra.read(blfilestr);
     String gfilestr = new String(blfilestr, "Unicode");
This gave me the String correctly.
But then i did a seek at an intermediate position in the file (but its a locaiton which i confirmed is not in between the 2 bytes of a Unicode char) and it fails to form a string correctly. I need to do this though.
Any ideas ?
Mallika.