URLDecoder behaviour in Solaris

Question

I run following piece of code in solaris and windows env. and get different results. Pls can someone give idea what is wrong in my solaris setup.
//---------CODE START--------------
public class TestEncBasic
public static void main(String arg[])
String strURL = "%DC" ;
String strTest = java.net.URLDecoder.decode(strURL);
for (int i = 0 ; i < strTest.length() ; i++)
System.out.println("char =" + strTest.charAt(i) + " int =" + (int)strTest.charAt(i) ) ;
System.out.println("System encoding =" + System.getProperty("file.encoding"));
// ---------CODE END----------
Output in Solaris :
char =? int =65533
System encoding =646
java full version "1.3.1_06-b01"
OS : SunOS amazon 5.8 Generic_108528-03 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-4
Output in Windows2000 :
char =&#9604; int =220
System encoding =Cp1252
java full version "1.3.1_04-b02"
Output in Linux :
char =� int =220
System encoding =ISO-8859-15
java full version "Blackdown-1.3.1-FCS"
OS: Linux conjurer 2.4.18-3 #1 Thu Apr 18 07:37:53 EDT 2002 i686 unknown

Answer 1

The URLDecoder method you used uses the default charset encoding for the system you are on. You should use the method where you can specify the charset. a good charset to use is UTF-8 since it is a charset that java supports.
//---------CODE START--------------
public class TestEncBasic
public static void main(String arg[])
String strURL = "%DC" ;
String strTest = java.net.URLDecoder.decode(strURL, "UTF-8");
for (int i = 0 ; i < strTest.length() ; i++)
System.out.println("char =" + strTest.charAt(i) + " int =" + (int)strTest.charAt(i) ) ;
System.out.println("System encoding =" + System.getProperty("file.encoding"));
// ---------CODE END----------
This code should return the same answer for all systems