The font on the console may not be able to draw it.  Try it with an
appropriate font in a JComponent of some variety.

It runs 6 for me.

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#getBytes()

"The behavior of this method when this string cannot be encoded in the default charset is unspecified."

  BugBear

String.getBytes() uses the platform's default charset. See
<http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#getBytes()>

If the platform's default charset is "Cp1252" (like on my system and may
be on Crouchez's), then chinese.getBytes() returns 2 bytes. By the way:
the 2 bytes are {63,63} which is just {'?','?'} because the encoding
can't decode characters beyond '\u00ff'.

If the platform's default charset is "UTF-8" (like probably on
sadiruddin's system), then chinese.getBytes() returns 6 bytes.

On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 03:47:16 GMT, "Crouchez"
<blah@bllllllahblllbllahblahblahhh.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly
quoted someone who said :

I modified your code a little, so it will make the problem clear:

public class Chinese
  {
  /**
   * test harness
   *
   * @param args not used
   */
  public static void main ( String[] args )
     {
     System.out.println( System.getProperty( "file.encoding" ));
     String chinese = "\u4e2d\u5c0f";
     byte[] b = chinese.getBytes();
     for ( int i=0; i<b.length; i++ )
        {
        System.out.println( b[i]);
        }
     // prints
     // Cp1252
     // 63
     // 63
     // in other words ??.  Those tho chars are not available in your
default encoding.
     }
  }

I further modified you code to choose the encoding explicitly:

import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
public class Chinese
  {
  /**
   * test harness
   *
   * @param args not used
   */
  public static void main ( String[] args ) throws
UnsupportedEncodingException
  {
     System.out.println( System.getProperty( "file.encoding" ));
     String chinese = "\u4e2d\u5c0f";
     // explicit choice of encoding, designed to support Chinese.
     byte[] b = chinese.getBytes( "Big5-HKSCS" );
     for ( int i=0; i<b.length; i++ )
        {
        System.out.println( 0xff & b[i]);
        }
     // prints
     // Cp1252
     // 164
     // 164
     // 164
     // 112  more like you would expect.
  }
  }

cheers.

If I do

byte[] b = chinese.getBytes( "UTF-8" );

b.length = 6. But why 6 when I thought chinese characters take up 2 bytes
per character?