public static byte[] getBytes(String s) 
{
    return s.getBytes();
}

Gets the bytes of the specified string. This will simply return the ASCII values of the characters in the string

 public static byte[] getBytes(String s,
    WorkbookSettings ws) 
{
    try
    {
      return s.getBytes(ws.getEncoding());
    }
    catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e)
    {
      // fail silently
      return null;
    }
}

Gets the bytes of the specified string. This will simply return the ASCII values of the characters in the string

 public static  void getBytes(String s,
    byte[] d,
    int pos) 
{
    byte[] b = getBytes(s);
    System.arraycopy(b, 0, d, pos, b.length);
}

Gets the ASCII bytes from the specified string and places them in the array at the specified position

 public static String getString(byte[] d,
    int length,
    int pos,
    WorkbookSettings ws) 
{
    if( length == 0 )
    {
      return "";  // Reduces number of new Strings
    }
    try
    {
      return new String(d, pos, length, ws.getEncoding());
      //      byte[] b = new byte[length];
      //      System.arraycopy(d, pos, b, 0, length);
      //      return new String(b, ws.getEncoding());
    }
    catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e)
    {
      logger.warn(e.toString());
      return "";
    }
}

Gets a string from the data array using the character encoding for this workbook

 public static byte[] getUnicodeBytes(String s) 
{
    try
    {
      byte[] b = s.getBytes(UNICODE_ENCODING);
      // Sometimes this method writes out the unicode
      // identifier
      if (b.length == (s.length() * 2 + 2))
      {
        byte[] b2 = new byte[b.length - 2];
        System.arraycopy(b, 2, b2, 0, b2.length);
        b = b2;
      }
      return b;
    }
    catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e)
    {
      // Fail silently
      return null;
    }
}

Converts the string into a little-endian array of Unicode bytes

 public static  void getUnicodeBytes(String s,
    byte[] d,
    int pos) 
{
    byte[] b = getUnicodeBytes(s);
    System.arraycopy(b, 0, d, pos, b.length);
}

Inserts the unicode byte representation of the specified string into the array passed in

 public static String getUnicodeString(byte[] d,
    int length,
    int pos) 
{
    try
    {
      byte[] b = new byte[length * 2];
      System.arraycopy(d, pos, b, 0, length * 2);
      return new String(b, UNICODE_ENCODING);
    }
    catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e)
    {
      // Fail silently
      return "";
    }
}

Gets a string from the data array

 public static final String replace(String input,
    String search,
    String replace) 
{
    String fmtstr = input;
    int pos = fmtstr.indexOf(search);
    while (pos != -1)
    {
      StringBuffer tmp = new StringBuffer(fmtstr.substring(0, pos));
      tmp.append(replace);
      tmp.append(fmtstr.substring(pos + search.length()));
      fmtstr = tmp.toString();
      pos = fmtstr.indexOf(search, pos+replace.length());
    }
    return fmtstr;
}

Replaces all instances of search with replace in the input. Even though later versions of java can use string.replace() this is included Java 1.2 compatibility