How to use Special Chars in Java/Eclipse

java eclipse unicode encoding cp1252
Burkhard picture Burkhard · Oct 14, 2008 · Viewed 77.1k times · Source

How can I use/display characters like ♥, ♦, ♣, or ♠ in Java/Eclipse?

When I try to use them directly, e.g. in the source code, Eclipse cannot save the file.

What can I do?

Edit: How can I find the unicode escape sequence?

Answer

Joe Lencioni picture Joe Lencioni · Oct 14, 2008

The problem is that the characters you are using cannot be represented in the encoding you have the file set to (Cp1252). The way I see it, you essentially have two options:

Option 1. Change the encoding. According to IBM, you should set the encoding to UTF-8. I believe this would solve your problem.

  • Set the global text file encoding preference Workbench > Editors to "UTF-8".
  • If an encoding other than UTF-8 is required, set the encoding on the individual file rather than using the global preference setting. To do this use the File > Properties > Info menu selection to set the encoding on an individual file.

Option 2. Remove the characters which are not supported by the "Cp1252" character encoding. You can replace the unsupported characters with Unicode escape sequences (\uxxxx). While this would allow you to save your file, it is not necessarily the best solution.

For the characters you specified in your question here are the Unicode escape sequences:

♥ \u2665
♦ \u2666
♣ \u2663
♠ \u2660

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