Encodings
=========
The Java programming language uses Unicode throughout. In an effort
to integrate well with other locales, `gcj' allows `.java' files to be
written using almost any encoding. `gcj' knows how to convert these
encodings into its internal encoding at compile time.
You can use the `--encoding=NAME' option to specify an encoding (of
a particular character set) to use for source files. If this is not
specified, the default encoding comes from your current locale. If
your host system has insufficient locale support, then `gcj' assumes
the default encoding to be the `UTF-8' encoding of Unicode.
To implement `--encoding', `gcj' simply uses the host platform's
`iconv' conversion routine. This means that in practice `gcj' is
limited by the capabilities of the host platform.
The names allowed for the argument `--encoding' vary from platform
to platform (since they are not standardized anywhere). However, `gcj'
implements the encoding named `UTF-8' internally, so if you choose to
use this for your source files you can be assured that it will work on
every host.