useEncoding(String enc) Method

Use the useEncoding(String enc) method to designate a particular encoding to be used as the OTD’s current encoding. The current OTD encoding is used when the OTD is marshaled without an overriding encoding, which is permitted for the marshal (OtdOutputStream, String) method.

An OTD’s current encoding is initially EBCDIC (CP037) when it is instantiated. There are two ways to change it:

1. Unmarshaling the data, whereby the data’s stated encoding becomes the current encoding.

2. Using this method to specify it.

Changing the encoding through the use of this method causes reset() to be subsequently (and automatically) called, causing the OTD’s existing content to be erased. This behaviour exists to avoid situations where data, successfully unmarshaled with one charset, fails to marshal under a different charset, due to the absence of codepoint mappings between the two encodings. Use the marshal(String) method when data, which flowed in using a charset, must then be flowed out with a different charset.

If the specified encoding is the same as the current OTD encoding, the call returns without affecting the OTD’s state (i.e., reset() is not called) and the data and current encoding will remain unchanged.

If the specified encoding is not supported, or is not a two-way encoding (one that can decode or encode, but not both), a java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException is thrown.