Re: number of bytes for each (uni)code point while using utf-8 as encoding ...

From:
Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:17:59 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<d18b8ea9-1ec7-4098-9b77-eff3500bc14f@googlegroups.com>
Daniele Futtorovic wrote:

lbrt chx _ gemale allegedly wrote:
lbrt chx _ gemale allegedly wrote:
&gt;
&gt;&gt;&gt; How can you get the number of bytes you &quot;get()&quot;?
&gt;
&gt;&gt; Well, UTF-8 always encodes the same char to the same (number of)=

 bytes,

&gt;&gt; doesn&#39;t it?
&gt; ~
&gt; What about files, which (author&#39;s) claim to be UTF-8 encoded bu=

t they aren&#39;t, and/or get somehow corrupted in transit? There are quite=
 a bit of &quot;monkeys&quot; (us) messing with the metadata headers of htm=
l pages

&gt; ~
&gt; Sometimes you must double check every file you keep in a text bank/=

corpus, because, through associations, one mistake may propagate and create=
 other kinds of problems

&gt; ~
&gt;&gt; So you could just build a map char -&gt; size /a priori/.
&gt; ~
&gt; ...
&gt; ~
&gt;&gt; But really, what&#39;s the use? ...
&gt; ~
&gt; to you there is none but I am trying pinpoint the closest I possibl=

y can:

&gt; ~
&gt; .onMalformedInput(CodingErrorAction.REPORT);
&gt; .onUnmappableCharacter(CodingErrorAction.REPORT);
&gt; ~
&gt; errors
&gt; ~
&gt; There should be a way to get sizes as you get UTF-8 encoded sequenc=

es from a file. Also I how found that quite a few files get corrupted while=
 in transmission and sometimes I wonder how safe that naive mapping you men=
tion is, since those file formatting don&#39;t have any kind of built-in er=
ror correction measures

 
And what&#39;s that knowledge about the mapping size going to tell you?
 
Assume the file is corrupted. Then you can&#39;t know the original charac=

ter

(since it&#39;s corrupted). Hence even if you know to how many bytes each
character maps, you can&#39;t tell whether the size you&#39;re seeing is =

wrong

or right.
 
At least that&#39;s how it seems to me.
 
Even the malformedness is no reliable indicator. Your data might get
corrupted and the outcome be well-formed, as far as the character
encoding is concerned.
 
I have to agree with Lew. Only the transmission layer can reliably
tackle this problem. Just pass a checksum and be done with it.


Even the file being corrupt has no bearing on the correctness of the Java=
 
code. The file itself may actually be corrupt and the Java code yet
working perfectly.

--
Lew

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