Java decode string escaped by Actionscript

Question

I have an environment where strings are percent encoded by Actionscript escape() function and then passed to Java for decoding.

I have for example a test string "m é".
It is passed to Actionscript escape() that outputs "m%20%E9"
When I try to decode it with Java:

URLDecoder.decode("m%20%E9", "UTF-8")

The result is:

"m ?"

%E9 seems the unicode point for "é" character, but it is not quite understood by Java decode.
Is there a way to decode in Java the strings encoded by Actionscript escape()? What escape format do these function use since they seem to be different?

Thanks in advance for any help,
Paolo

Joachim Sauer · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-02 15:51:16Z

10

m%20%E9 is not UTF-8. That's easy to see because any character outside of the ASCII range (i.e. 0-127) would need at least 2 bytes in UTF-8. Since %20 is space, that leaves only %E9 for é.

And é is in fact U+00E9. The encoding maps 1:1 to Unicode in the lower 255 characters is ISO-8859-1.

So the correct way to decode this would be this:

URLDecoder.decode("m%20%E9", "ISO-8859-1")

answered Aug 2, 2011 at 15:51

Joachim Sauer

309k59 gold badges568 silver badges624 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

Paull Over a year ago

Hi Joachim, thanks for your help but your code produces for me the same result "m ?" :(

Joachim Sauer Over a year ago

@Paull: for me it produces "m é", as expected.

Paull Over a year ago

you are right, I tried in a new application and it works perfectly. There must be something wrong in my setup. Thanks again!

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Java decode string escaped by Actionscript

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related