maven file.encoding and Charset.defaultCharset() - maven

Question

my maven parent POM contains
<file.encoding>UTF-8</file.encoding>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
and I have a JUnit-Test which contains the following code:
byte[] bytes;
System.out.println("------------------" + System.getProperty("file.encoding"));
try {
bytes = "ü".getBytes(); // german umlaut u - two bytes in utf-8 one byte in latin-1
System.out.println("Byte count: " + bytes.length);
for (int i = 0; i < bytes.length; i++) {
System.out.println(String.format("%02x", bytes[i]));
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println("------------------" + Charset.defaultCharset());
When I run mvn clean test (on my windows machine with a default charset of Cp1252) the output is
------------------Cp1252
Byte count: 1
fc
------------------windows-1252
When I run mvn -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 clean test the output is:
------------------UTF-8
Byte count: 1
fc
------------------windows-1252
Now I have two questions:
1) What is the property <file.encoding> in my POM good for?
2) When I specified -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 why wasn't the default charset changed to UTF-8 (and therefore getBytes() still used 'cp1252' and returns 1 byte) and how do I change this
Thanks in advance,
Ronald

Answer 1

The editor must set the same encoding too. Evidently you saved the file in Cp1252. Use JEdit or NotePad++ to check that.
getBytes("UTF-8"); // 2
getBytes("Cp1252"); // 1
getBytes(); // Depending on platform, System.getProperty("file.encoding")
What maven does with those properties, I am not entirely sure in case of file.encoding.

Answer 2

If you want to have Charset.defaultCharset returning UTF-8 you need to set it for the plugin argLine as well, because its too late if you specify it only in the properties.
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.19.1</version>
<configuration>
<skipTests>${skip.unit.tests}</skipTests>
<enableAssertions>true</enableAssertions>
<argLine>${surefireArgLine} -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8</argLine>
</configuration>
</plugin>