[LOG4J2-1214] Misleading documentation of PatternLayout

• Type: Documentation
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 2.1
• Fix Version/s: 2.4.1
• Component/s: Layouts
• Labels: documentation

Environment

platform independently

• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Jan Kursawe
• Created: 08/Dec/15 09:35
• Updated: 08/Dec/15 09:49
• Resolved: 08/Dec/15 09:49

Description

The documentation for the PatternLayout on the Website https://logging.apache.org/log4j/log4j-2.1/manual/layouts.html#PatternLayout contains the following wrong statement:

The character set to use when converting the syslog String to a byte array. The String must be a valid Charset. If not specified, the default system Charset will be used.

The Java-Doc states no information:

[...]
@param charset The character set.
[...]

The implementation look like the following:

@PluginAttribute(value = "charset", defaultString = "UTF-8") final Charset charset,

The fallback default charset is not the system's charset. It's always UTF-8

That difference leads up to an encoding issue when an instance writes messages to a logger with system's charset different from UTF-8.

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Tasks:
inform persons in power of JavaDoc and WebsiteDoc
Change the documentation on website
Add more information to JavaDoc
review by responsible persons