1 <!-- 2 Copyright (c) 2001, 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 3 DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER. 4 5 This code is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it 6 under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only, as 7 published by the Free Software Foundation. Oracle designates this 8 particular file as subject to the "Classpath" exception as provided 9 by Oracle in the LICENSE file that accompanied this code. 10 11 This code is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT 12 ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or 13 FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License 14 version 2 for more details (a copy is included in the LICENSE file that 15 accompanied this code). 16 17 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License version 18 2 along with this work; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, 19 Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA. 20 21 Please contact Oracle, 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, CA 94065 USA 22 or visit www.oracle.com if you need additional information or have any 23 questions. 24 --> 25 26 <!doctype html public "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN"> 27 <html> 28 <body bgcolor="white"> 29 30 31 Defines charsets, decoders, and encoders, for translating between bytes and 32 Unicode characters. 33 34 <blockquote><table cellspacing=1 cellpadding=0 summary="Summary of charsets, decoders, and encoders in this package"> 35 <tr><th><p align="left">Class name</p></th><th><p align="left">Description</p></th></tr> 36 <tr><td valign=top><tt>{@link java.nio.charset.Charset}</tt></td> 37 <td>A named mapping between characters<br>and bytes</td></tr> 38 <tr><td valign=top><tt>{@link java.nio.charset.CharsetDecoder}</tt></td> 39 <td>Decodes bytes into characters</td></tr> 40 <tr><td valign=top><tt>{@link java.nio.charset.CharsetEncoder} </tt></td> 41 <td>Encodes characters into bytes</td></tr> 42 <tr><td valign=top><tt>{@link java.nio.charset.CoderResult} </tt></td> 43 <td>Describes coder results</td></tr> 44 <tr><td valign=top><tt>{@link java.nio.charset.CodingErrorAction} </tt></td> 45 <td>Describes actions to take when<br>coding errors are detected</td></tr> 46 47 </table></blockquote> 48 49 <p> A <i>charset</i> is named mapping between sequences of sixteen-bit Unicode 50 characters and sequences of bytes, in the sense defined in <a 51 href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2278.txt"><i>RFC 2278</i></a>. A 52 <i>decoder</i> is an engine which transforms bytes in a specific charset into 53 characters, and an <i>encoder</i> is an engine which transforms characters into 54 bytes. Encoders and decoders operate on byte and character buffers. They are 55 collectively referred to as <i>coders</i>. 56 57 <p> The {@link java.nio.charset.Charset} class defines methods for creating 58 coders for a given charset and for retrieving the various names associated with 59 a charset. It also defines static methods for testing whether a particular 60 charset is supported, for locating charset instances by name, and for 61 constructing a map that contains every charset for which support is available 62 in the current Java virtual machine. 63 64 <p> Most users will not use these classes directly; instead they will use the 65 existing charset-related constructors and methods in the {@link 66 java.lang.String} class, together with the existing {@link 67 java.io.InputStreamReader} and {@link java.io.OutputStreamWriter} classes, all 68 of whose implementations have been reworked to make use of the charset 69 facilities defined in this package. A small number of changes have been made 70 to the {@link java.io.InputStreamReader} and {@link java.io.OutputStreamWriter} 71 classes in order to allow explicit charset objects to be specified in the 72 construction of instances of those classes. 73 74 <p> Support for new charsets can be made available via the interface defined in 75 the {@link java.nio.charset.spi.CharsetProvider} class in the <tt>{@link 76 java.nio.charset.spi}</tt> package. 77 78 <p> Unless otherwise noted, passing a <tt>null</tt> argument to a constructor 79 or method in any class or interface in this package will cause a {@link 80 java.lang.NullPointerException NullPointerException} to be thrown. 81 82 83 @since 1.4 84 @author Mark Reinhold 85 @author JSR-51 Expert Group 86 87 </body> 88 </html>