Infinite ByteBuffer in Java.

Question

I'm working on a program where I'm compressing a large amount on information and storing it in bytes in a buffer. I can't use ByteBuffer because I don't know the finall size.

What would be a better way to implement this?

Thanks,

Answer 1

How about ByteArrayOutputStream? Granted, it's not exactly as convenient, but it'll do what you want. When you're finished gathering bytes you can just pop out a byte array.

Answer 2

You should store large amounts of information in a file, or a database, not memory. Sooner or later you will run out of memory.

Answer 3

You can use Apache MINA IOBuffer however its resizing algo is fairly expensive.

What I do is use a direct byte buffer, you don't need to know eactly how big it will be, as unused space consumes virtual memory, not heap or even main memory. On a 64-bit machine, virtual memory is very cheap.

You know the final size won't be much larger than the orginal.