Supported Encodings

The classes java.io.InputStreamReader, java.io.OutputStreamWriter, java.lang.String, and classes in the java.nio.charset package can convert between Unicode and a number of other character encodings. The supported encodings vary between different implementations of the Java 2 platform. The java.lang package specification and the class description for java.nio.charset.Charset list the encodings that any implementation of the Java 2 platform, Standard Edition, v. 1.4 is required to support.

Note -- In the java.io.* and java.lang.* classes, some of the required encodings have canonical names in Sun's implementations that are different from the names shown in the specification. The required names of these encodings are supported through an alias mechanism: US-ASCII maps to ASCII, ISO-8859-1 to ISO8859_1, UTF-8 to UTF8, UTF-16BE to UnicodeBigUnmarked, and UTF-16LE to UnicodeLittleUnmarked. The java.nio.charset classes use the specified names directly.

Sun's Java 2 Software Development Kit, Standard Edition, v. 1.4 for all platforms (Solaris, Linux, and Microsoft Windows) and the Java 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition, v. 1.4 for Solaris and Linux support all encodings shown on this page. Sun's Java 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition, v. 1.4 for Microsoft Windows comes in two different versions: US-only and international. The US-only version only supports the encodings shown in the first table. The international version (which includes the lib/charsets.jar file) supports all encodings shown on this page.

The following tables show the encoding sets supported by J2SE 1.4. The canonical names used by the new java.nio APIs are in many cases not the same as those used in the java.io and java.lang APIs.

Basic Encoding Set (contained in lib/rt.jar)
Supported by java.nio APIs

Canonical Name	Description
US-ASCII	American Standard Code for Information Interchange
Cp1252	Windows Latin-1
ISO-8859-1	ISO 8859-1, Latin alphabet No. 1
ISO-8859-15	Latin alphabet No. 9
UTF-8	Eight-bit UCS Transformation Format
UTF-16	Sixteen-bit UCS Transformation Format, byte order identified by an optional byte-order mark
UTF-16BE	Sixteen-bit UCS Transformation Format, big-endian byte order
UTF-16LE	Sixteen-bit UCS Transformation Format, little-endian byte order

Basic Encoding Set (contained in lib/rt.jar)
Supported by java.io and java.lang APIs

Canonical Name	Description
ASCII	American Standard Code for Information Interchange
Cp1252	Windows Latin-1
ISO8859_1	ISO 8859-1, Latin alphabet No. 1
UnicodeBig	Sixteen-bit Unicode Transformation Format, big-endian byte order, with byte-order mark
UnicodeBigUnmarked	Sixteen-bit Unicode Transformation Format, big-endian byte order
UnicodeLittle	Sixteen-bit Unicode Transformation Format, little-endian byte order, with byte-order mark
UnicodeLittleUnmarked	Sixteen-bit Unicode Transformation Format, little-endian byte order
UTF8	Eight-bit Unicode Transformation Format
UTF-16	Sixteen-bit Unicode Transformation Format, byte order specified by a mandatory initial byte-order mark

Canonical Name	Description
Big5	Big5, Traditional Chinese
Big5_HKSCS	Big5 with Hong Kong extensions, Traditional Chinese
Big5_Solaris	Big5 with seven additional Hanzi ideograph character mappings for the Solaris zh_TW.BIG5 locale
Cp037	USA, Canada (Bilingual, French), Netherlands, Portugal, Brazil, Australia
Cp273	IBM Austria, Germany
Cp277	IBM Denmark, Norway
Cp278	IBM Finland, Sweden
Cp280	IBM Italy
Cp284	IBM Catalan/Spain, Spanish Latin America
Cp285	IBM United Kingdom, Ireland
Cp297	IBM France
Cp420	IBM Arabic
Cp424	IBM Hebrew
Cp437	MS-DOS United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa
Cp500	EBCDIC 500V1
Cp737	PC Greek
Cp775	PC Baltic
Cp838	IBM Thailand extended SBCS
Cp850	MS-DOS Latin-1
Cp852	MS-DOS Latin-2
Cp855	IBM Cyrillic
Cp856	IBM Hebrew
Cp857	IBM Turkish
Cp858	Variant of Cp850 with Euro character
Cp860	MS-DOS Portuguese
Cp861	MS-DOS Icelandic
Cp862	PC Hebrew
Cp863	MS-DOS Canadian French
Cp864	PC Arabic
Cp865	MS-DOS Nordic
Cp866	MS-DOS Russian
Cp868	MS-DOS Pakistan
Cp869	IBM Modern Greek
Cp870	IBM Multilingual Latin-2
Cp871	IBM Iceland
Cp874	IBM Thai
Cp875	IBM Greek
Cp918	IBM Pakistan (Urdu)
Cp921	IBM Latvia, Lithuania (AIX, DOS)
Cp922	IBM Estonia (AIX, DOS)
Cp930	Japanese Katakana-Kanji mixed with 4370 UDC, superset of 5026
Cp933	Korean Mixed with 1880 UDC, superset of 5029
Cp935	Simplified Chinese Host mixed with 1880 UDC, superset of 5031
Cp937	Traditional Chinese Host miexed with 6204 UDC, superset of 5033
Cp939	Japanese Latin Kanji mixed with 4370 UDC, superset of 5035
Cp942	IBM OS/2 Japanese, superset of Cp932
Cp942C	Variant of Cp942
Cp943	IBM OS/2 Japanese, superset of Cp932 and Shift-JIS
Cp943C	Variant of Cp943
Cp948	OS/2 Chinese (Taiwan) superset of 938
Cp949	PC Korean
Cp949C	Variant of Cp949
Cp950	PC Chinese (Hong Kong, Taiwan)
Cp964	AIX Chinese (Taiwan)
Cp970	AIX Korean
Cp1006	IBM AIX Pakistan (Urdu)
Cp1025	IBM Multilingual Cyrillic: Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovinia, Macedonia (FYR)
Cp1026	IBM Latin-5, Turkey
Cp1046	IBM Arabic - Windows
Cp1097	IBM Iran (Farsi)/Persian
Cp1098	IBM Iran (Farsi)/Persian (PC)
Cp1112	IBM Latvia, Lithuania
Cp1122	IBM Estonia
Cp1123	IBM Ukraine
Cp1124	IBM AIX Ukraine
Cp1140	Variant of Cp037 with Euro character
Cp1141	Variant of Cp273 with Euro character
Cp1142	Variant of Cp277 with Euro character
Cp1143	Variant of Cp278 with Euro character
Cp1144	Variant of Cp280 with Euro character
Cp1145	Variant of Cp284 with Euro character
Cp1146	Variant of Cp285 with Euro character
Cp1147	Variant of Cp297 with Euro character
Cp1148	Variant of Cp500 with Euro character
Cp1149	Variant of Cp871 with Euro character
Cp1250	Windows Eastern European
Cp1251	Windows Cyrillic
Cp1253	Windows Greek
Cp1254	Windows Turkish
Cp1255	Windows Hebrew
Cp1256	Windows Arabic
Cp1257	Windows Baltic
Cp1258	Windows Vietnamese
Cp1381	IBM OS/2, DOS People's Republic of China (PRC)
Cp1383	IBM AIX People's Republic of China (PRC)
Cp33722	IBM-eucJP - Japanese (superset of 5050)
EUC_CN	GB2312, EUC encoding, Simplified Chinese
EUC_JP	JIS X 0201, 0208, 0212, EUC encoding, Japanese
EUC_KR	KS C 5601, EUC encoding, Korean
EUC_TW	CNS11643 (Plane 1-3), EUC encoding, Traditional Chinese
GB18030	Simplified Chinese, PRC standard
GBK	GBK, Simplified Chinese
ISCII91	ISCII91 encoding of Indic scripts
ISO2022CN	ISO 2022 CN, Chinese (conversion to Unicode only)
ISO2022CN_CNS	CNS 11643 in ISO 2022 CN form, Traditional Chinese (conversion from Unicode only)
ISO2022CN_GB	GB 2312 in ISO 2022 CN form, Simplified Chinese (conversion from Unicode only)
ISO2022JP	JIS X 0201, 0208 in ISO 2022 form, Japanese
ISO2022KR	ISO 2022 KR, Korean
ISO8859_2	ISO 8859-2, Latin alphabet No. 2
ISO8859_3	ISO 8859-3, Latin alphabet No. 3
ISO8859_4	ISO 8859-4, Latin alphabet No. 4
ISO8859_5	ISO 8859-5, Latin/Cyrillic alphabet
ISO8859_6	ISO 8859-6, Latin/Arabic alphabet
ISO8859_7	ISO 8859-7, Latin/Greek alphabet
ISO8859_8	ISO 8859-8, Latin/Hebrew alphabet
ISO8859_9	ISO 8859-9, Latin alphabet No. 5
ISO8859_13	ISO 8859-13, Latin alphabet No. 7
ISO8859_15_FDIS	ISO 8859-15, Latin alphabet No. 9
JIS0201	JIS X 0201, Japanese
JIS0208	JIS X 0208, Japanese
JIS0212	JIS X 0212, Japanese
JISAutoDetect	Detects and converts from Shift-JIS, EUC-JP, ISO 2022 JP (conversion to Unicode only)
Johab	Johab, Korean
KOI8_R	KOI8-R, Russian
MS874	Windows Thai
MS932	Windows Japanese
MS936	Windows Simplified Chinese
MS949	Windows Korean
MS950	Windows Traditional Chinese
MacArabic	Macintosh Arabic
MacCentralEurope	Macintosh Latin-2
MacCroatian	Macintosh Croatian
MacCyrillic	Macintosh Cyrillic
MacDingbat	Macintosh Dingbat
MacGreek	Macintosh Greek
MacHebrew	Macintosh Hebrew
MacIceland	Macintosh Iceland
MacRoman	Macintosh Roman
MacRomania	Macintosh Romania
MacSymbol	Macintosh Symbol
MacThai	Macintosh Thai
MacTurkish	Macintosh Turkish
MacUkraine	Macintosh Ukraine
SJIS	Shift-JIS, Japanese
TIS620	TIS620, Thai