Java™ How to Program, Seventh Edition

I.1. Introduction

The use of inconsistent character encodings (i.e., numeric values associated with characters) when developing global software products causes serious problems because computers process information using numbers. For example, the character “a” is converted to a numeric value so that a computer can manipulate that piece of data. Many countries and corporations have developed encoding systems that are incompatible with the encoding systems of other countries and corporations. For example, the Microsoft Windows operating system assigns the value 0xC0 to the character “A with a grave accent,” while the Apple Macintosh operating system assigns the same value to an upside-down question mark. This results in the misrepresentation and ...