Java : all 8-bit data cannot be cast to char type

If you have a byte and want to make a String, a simple cast to a char will only work if you are dealing with 7-bit ASCII. If that byte could be extended ASCII, the cast will not encode to the correct character code.

This is the sure way to get all 8-bit characters represented in Strings:

new String(new byte[]{c}, "ISO-8859-1")

This is to do with the default encoding used by the JVM which is likely not "ISO-8859-1". On Linux, it is likely to be "UTF-8" and it is "MacRoman" on Snow Leopard (Mac).