Unable to read tabfile containing char u00E9 (spanish)from appln server in 4.7

Question

Hello,
I am facing a problem during read of a tab delimited file from application servers. My file contains spanish and japanese text(eg. éêèóñôçëíáÉÓÍÚÁ), when i upload the file onto application server and perform read using the following code, all the spanish characters are read as '#'(# being a standard replacement character).
  OPEN DATASET p_file FOR INPUT IN TEXT MODE ENCODING DEFAULT.
If there is an error in opening the file an error is thrown
  IF sy-subrc <> 0.
    p_error = 10.         " Error -
File could not be opened
    EXIT.
  ELSE.
    p_error = 0.
  ENDIF.
Reads the contents of the file into an internal table
  DO.
    READ DATASET p_file INTO t_data_tab.
At end of file exit, else append contents to
  the internal table
    IF sy-subrc <> 0.
      EXIT.
    ELSE.
      APPEND t_data_tab.
    ENDIF.
  ENDDO.
Close the dataset
  CLOSE DATASET p_file.
Upload of same file as CSV works fine. Can some please tell why the Tab file upload fails and provide a solution for this problem.
Thanks in advance!!
Regards,
Bindu
File content:
2000.00     EUR     20060213     Philippé Fortes Test  7.11 Item  Line 1

Answer 1

Hello Bindu
This sounds quite like a Unicode problem.
Maybe the class CL_ABAP_FILE_UTILITIES could be of help:
(1) Check with the static method CL_ABAP_FILE_UTILITIES=>CHECK_UTF8 whether the file on the application server is encoded using UTF-8
(2) If so, try to read the file
OPEN DATASET... ENCODING UTF-8.
Regards
   Uwe