The native2ascii is a handy tool build-in in the JDK, which is used to convert a file with ‘non-Latin 1′ or ‘non-Unicode’ characters to ‘Unicode-encoded’ characters.

Native2ascii example

1. Create a file (source.txt)

Create a file named “source.txt”, put some Chinese characters inside, and save it as “UTF-8″ format.

2. native2ascii

Use native2ascii command to convert it into Unicode format.

C:\>native2ascii -encoding utf8 c:\source.txt c:\output.txt

The native2ascii will read all the characters from “c:\source.txt” and encode it with “utf8″ format, and output all encoded characters to “c:\output.txt”

3. Read Output

Open the “c:\output.txt”, you will see the all encoded characters, e.g \ufeff\u6768\u6728\u91d1

Reference

1. http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/tooldocs/windows/native2ascii.html

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