The temporary char[] buffer is cached per InputStream instance, so the extra memory allocation shouldn't be a big deal. One could also use String(byte[],offset,len,"UTF-8"), and that creates a char[] that is used directly by the string instead of being copied. It remains to be seen how fast the native java char converter is though.
I like the idea of the length being the number of bytes... it encapsulates the content in case you want to rapidly skip over it (or rapidly copy it). It's more future proof w.r.t. alternate encodings (or binary), and if it had been number if bytes from the start, it wouldn't have to be changed now. -Yonik On 8/29/05, Doug Cutting <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I would argue that the length written be the number of characters in the > string, rather than the number of bytes written, since that can minimize > string memory allocations. >
