Excel character encoding, Java, and you

["D. Alvarado" <la...@coolgoose.com>]

Yes, you.  I had naively assumed that Excel represents characters the same 
way that a Java "char" primitive type does.  As I have learned recently, that 
is false.  My question is, what is the standard encoding of MS Excel 
characters and what is an appropriate conversion mechanism between 
Java "char" type encoding (ISO 8859-1, right?) and Excel encoding?

Thanks, Dave

Re: Excel character encoding, Java, and you

[Jim Cobban <jc...@magma.ca>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "D. Alvarado" <la...@coolgoose.com>
Subject: Excel character encoding, Java, and you


> Yes, you.  I had naively assumed that Excel represents characters the same
> way that a Java "char" primitive type does.  As I have learned recently,
that
> is false.  My question is, what is the standard encoding of MS Excel
> characters and what is an appropriate conversion mechanism between
> Java "char" type encoding (ISO 8859-1, right?) and Excel encoding?

ISO 8859-1 only describes page 0 of the Java char type.  The Java char type
implements Unicode.  Excel also implements a 16-bit character set.  I don't
know what it uses, but I would have thought that for the majority of
characters used in the West it was the same, bar byte ordering.