------- Additional Comments From ovidr at users dot sourceforge dot net 2004-12-15 04:59 ------- It isn't a compiling problem that I'm trying to illustrate. TestD.java (included above) has a line: String s = "" characters. If these characters were received over a network connection as a byte stream, they would still be converted to a string via the "new String(byte[])" method, which is used in TestD.java. They would then be turned into a String, and displayed, as in the screenshot attached above. gcj doesn't seem to convert the characters properly (not in the same was a sun's java anyway). The testcase and screenshot hopefully communicate what I mean. Anyway, compiling to bytecode is separate issue: gcc version 4.0.0 20041213 (experimental) gcj -C --encoding=UTF-8 TestD.java TestD.java:12: error: malformed UTF-8 character. String s = "░ñâRÇÇNÇåñ░"; gcj -C --encoding=ISO-8859-1 TestD.java TestD.java:1: fatal error: unknown encoding: 'ISO-8859-1' This might mean that your locale's encoding is not supported by your system's iconv(3) implementation. If you aren't trying to use a particular encoding for your input file, try the '--encoding=UTF-8' option compilation terminated. I have mingw msys iconv (GNU libiconv 1.8) on my system. -- http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14670