How does this normalize function work?
<p>I was doing a Junit tutorial and I came across this normalize function that was being tested. It was defined like this:</p>

<pre><code> public static String normalizeWord(String word) {
        try {
            int i;
            Class&lt;?&gt; normalizerClass = Class.forName("java.text.Normalizer");
            Class&lt;?&gt; normalizerFormClass = null;
            Class&lt;?&gt;[] nestedClasses = normalizerClass.getDeclaredClasses();
            for (i = 0; i &lt; nestedClasses.length; i++) {
                Class&lt;?&gt; nestedClass = nestedClasses[i];
                if (nestedClass.getName().equals("java.text.Normalizer$Form")) {
                    normalizerFormClass = nestedClass;
                }
            }
            assert normalizerFormClass.isEnum();
            Method methodNormalize = normalizerClass.getDeclaredMethod(
                                                            "normalize",
                                                            CharSequence.class,
                                                            normalizerFormClass);
            Object nfcNormalization = null;
            Object[] constants = normalizerFormClass.getEnumConstants();
            for (i = 0; i &lt; constants.length; i++) {
                Object constant = constants[i];
                if (constant.toString().equals("NFC")) {
                    nfcNormalization = constant;
                }
            }
            return (String) methodNormalize.invoke(null, word, nfcNormalization);
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            return null;
        }
    }
</code></pre>

<p>How does this function work? What is it actually doing?</p>
