public static String getFromUnicode(byte[] string) 
{
        return getFromUnicode(string, 0, string.length / 2);
}

given a byte array of 16-bit unicode characters, compress to 8-bit and return a string

 public static String getFromUnicode(byte[] string,
    int offset,
    int len) throws IllegalArgumentException, ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException 
{
        if ((offset <  0) || (offset  >= string.length))
        {
            throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException("Illegal offset");
        }
        if ((len <  0) || (((string.length - offset) / 2) <  len))
        {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Illegal length");
        }
        byte[] bstring = new byte[ len ];
        int    index   = offset + 1;   // start with low bits.
        for (int k = 0; k <  len; k++)
        {
            bstring[ k ] = string[ index ];
            index        += 2;
        }
        return new String(bstring);
}

given a byte array of 16-bit unicode characters, compress to 8-bit and return a string

 public static  void putCompressedUnicode(String input,
    byte[] output,
    int offset) 
{
        char[] temp = input.toCharArray();
        for (int k = 0; k <  temp.length; k++)
        {
            output[ offset + k ] = ( byte ) temp[ k ];
        }
}

write compressed unicode

 public static  void putUncompressedUnicode(String input,
    byte[] output,
    int offset) 
{
        char[] temp = input.toCharArray();
        for (int k = 0; k <  temp.length; k++)
        {
            output[ offset + (2 * k) ]     = ( byte ) temp[ k ];
            output[ offset + (2 * k) + 1 ] = ( byte ) (temp[ k ]  > > 8);
        }
}

Write uncompressed unicode