Re: Brain cramp: reading an IFS file from program running on PC

Hi David,

Well, I think Bill pinpointed the problem first, followed by Gary, Dan,
and now me.

This is what I assumed the IFSTextFileInputStream class would do. Reading
from a text file in Java should convert from >EBCDIC to Unicode
automatically.

Yep, sort of. In your case - cross platform - it's only because a
certain method in IFSTextFileInputStream does it for you.

I'm 95% sure it DOES do that ... but I just can't figure out what I'm
doing wrong.

You're making some invalid assumptions. The major one is that the
Properties.load() method is calling IFSTextFileInputStream.read(int length)
under the covers. In fact, IFSTextFileInputStream inherits three other
read() methods from IFSFileInputStream, none of which automatically convert.
It's most likely that Properties.load() is calling one of these and,
therefore, no conversion gets done.

As Bill pointed out, the documentation for Properties very specifically
states that it expects ISO 8859-1 encoding, and that's not what is being
returned. The best thing to do is write the file originally as ISO 8859-1.
Next best is to run native2ascii (you'll have to use Qshell on the AS/400)
to get it to the proper format. A distant third is directly using Unicode
escapes for the characters. Way back is doing your own conversion on the
input stream before the Properties.load(). I think that is sort of what
Gary's code meant to do. .

I wouldn't be surprised at all, in fact I would expect, that the
"properties" file doesn't load properly even using Java on the AS/400. If
it does, it's a convenience IBM decided to supply.

I suspect this issue doesn't turn up more often because development is
generally done off-AS/400, and it gets cleaned up there, before being sent to the AS/400. So, that's my attempt at explaining. Hope you get a satisfactory (to you) conclusion.


Joe Sam

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----- Original Message ----- From: "David Gibbs" <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Java Programming on and around the iSeries / AS400"
<java400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 3:33 PM
Subject: Re: Brain cramp: reading an IFS file from program running on PC

Gary L Peskin wrote:

Oh, I think I see what you're talking about now. Properties.load()
assumes
that its argument is a stream using ISO 8859-1 encoding which is a kind
of
ASCII. Your input stream ("is") is presenting characters based on the
native byte representation on the 400 since InputStreams don't take the
CCSID into account. I think you can create your own input stream class
to
accomplish what you want. I haven't tested this (or even compiled it) so
take that into account. Also, you'd need to make adjustments where the
CCSID was not a single byte character set.

This is what I assumed the IFSTextFileInputStream class would do. Reading
from a text file in Java should convert from EBCDIC to Unicode
automatically.

Otherwise it seems to be a waste of code.

I'm 95% sure it DOES do that ... but I just can't figure out what I'm
doing wrong.

david


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