| J. Duke | 319a3b9 | 2007-12-01 00:00:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame^] | 1 | <!-- |
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| 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://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> |