Stupid InputStreamReader/character question

[Rick Genter]

I have an InputStream on which I will be reading intermixed text and
binary data. When I go to read the text data, I create an
InputStreamReader from the InputStream and read characters one at a
time until I read a delimiter character. At that point, I go back to
reading raw bytes from the InputStream.

InputStreamReader.read() returns an int. I want to put these ints into
a String. Is the following what I should be doing?

StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer ();
InputStreamReader reader = new InputStreamReader (input);
int nextCharacter;

do
{
nextCharacter = reader.read ();
if (nextCharacter == -1) // shouldn't happen given protocol
throw new EOFException ();
if ((char) nextCharacter != DELIMITER)
buffer.append ((char) nextCharacter);
}
while ((char) nextCharacter != DELIMITER);

I hate having to cast nextCharacter, but I suppose that I have no
choice (yes, I can create a char variable and do the cast once, which
I probably will end up doing, but still...)

Thanks in advance.

Rick

 

[Chris Berg]

I have an InputStream on which I will be reading intermixed text and
binary data. When I go to read the text data, I create an
InputStreamReader from the InputStream and read characters one at a
time until I read a delimiter character. At that point, I go back to
reading raw bytes from the InputStream.

InputStreamReader.read() returns an int. I want to put these ints into
a String. Is the following what I should be doing?

StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer ();
InputStreamReader reader = new InputStreamReader (input);
int nextCharacter;

do
{
nextCharacter = reader.read ();
if (nextCharacter == -1) // shouldn't happen given protocol
throw new EOFException ();
if ((char) nextCharacter != DELIMITER)
buffer.append ((char) nextCharacter);
}
while ((char) nextCharacter != DELIMITER);

I hate having to cast nextCharacter, but I suppose that I have no
choice (yes, I can create a char variable and do the cast once, which
I probably will end up doing, but still...)

Thanks in advance.

Rick

I don't think it can be avoided. The real ugliness is, that the return
value of reader.read() has 2 uses: to return the character, and to
return the EOF status. Thus, 16 bits is not enough. Still, any
alternative I can think about would be slower executing. It seems that
Sun is turning away from using EOFExceptions, at they slow down normal
(non-EOF'ing) code on most VM's.

Chris