Steve, Not being an expert in this area, I apologize for possibly wasting your time, but I was hoping to seed your exploration with the information I was given as a starting point.
It "seems" as though the file.encoding system property is related to the file system you are using (HFS, z/FS). It very well could be that there is an esoteric property related to the actual mount point you are using... heck I don't know. Here is a small java program I wrote to see what my file.encoding system property was: import java.io.*; public class Jtest { public static void main(String args[]) { System.out.println("file.encoding is " + System.getProperty("file.encoding")); } } In my case, the result was: file.encoding is Cp1047 Cp1047 is EBCDIC Latin-1 (If I'm not mistaken). I'm curious if yours says the same thing. It may not be a Java setting that is causing your problem but a file system attribute somewhere. Just trying to help, Kevin ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html