Loading java.util.Properties from a unicode file

The java.util.Properites class uses the "ISO 8859-1" encoding when reading contents from an input file. This is a major predicament when the input file contains non-plain Enlgish text. The ProperitesLoader class, below, makes it possible to load properties from an input file of any type of encoding.


import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class PropertiesLoader
{
   public static Properties loadProperties(InputStream is)
   {
      return loadProperties(is, "unicode");
   }

   public static Properties loadProperties(InputStream is, String encoding) throws IOException
   {
      StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
      InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(is, encoding);
      while(true)
      {
         int temp = isr.read();
         if(temp < 0)
            break;

         char c = (char) temp;
         sb.append(c);
      }

      String inputString = escapifyStr(sb.toString());
      byte[] bs = inputString.getBytes("ISO-8859-1");
      ByteArrayInputStream bais = new ByteArrayInputStream(bs);

      Properties ps = new Properties();
      ps.load(bais);
      return ps;
   }
      
   private static char hexDigit(char ch, int offset)
   {
      int val = (ch >> offset) & 0xF;
      if(val <= 9)
         return (char) ('0' + val);
      
      return (char) ('A' + val - 10);
   }

   
   private static String escapifyStr(String str)
   {      
      StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();

      int len = str.length();
      for(int x = 0; x < len; x++)
      {
         char ch = str.charAt(x);
         if(ch <= 0x007e)
         {
            result.append(ch);
            continue;
         }
         
         result.append('\\');
         result.append('u');
         result.append(hexDigit(ch, 12));
         result.append(hexDigit(ch, 8));
         result.append(hexDigit(ch, 4));
         result.append(hexDigit(ch, 0));
      }
      return result.toString();
   }
}