Urgent: comparing multi-byte characters to a single byte character!

Question

Let's say I have two strings, they have the same contents but use different encoding, how do I compare them?
String a = "GOLD";
String b = "G O L D ";
The method a.equals(b) doesn't seem to work.

Answer 1

try this:
String a = "GOLD";
String b = "G O L D ";
boolean bEqual = true;
int iLength = a.length();
int j = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < iLength; i++)  {
   while(b.substring(j,1).equals(" "))
      j++;
   if(!a.substring(i, 1).equals(b.substring(j,1))  {
      bEqual = false;
      break;
}