I want to read an input string and return it as a UTF8 encoded string. SO I found an example on the Oracle/Sun website that used FileInputStream. I didn't want to read a file, but a string, so I changed it to StringBufferInputStream and used the code below. The method parameter jtext, is some Japanese text. Actually this method works great. The question is about the deprecated code. I had to put @SuppressWarnings because StringBufferInputStream is deprecated. I want to know is there a better way to get a string input stream? Is it ok just to leave it as is? I've spent so long trying to fix this problem that I don't want to change anything now I seem to have cracked it.

            @SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
    private  String readInput(String jtext) {

        StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
        try {
        StringBufferInputStream  sbis = new StringBufferInputStream (jtext);
        InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(sbis,
                                  "UTF8");
        Reader in = new BufferedReader(isr);
        int ch;
        while ((ch = in.read()) > -1) {
            buffer.append((char)ch);
        }

        in.close();
        return buffer.toString();
        } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return null;
        }
    }