A buffer is a linear, finite sequence of elements of a specific primitive type. Aside from its content, the essential properties of a buffer are its capacity, limit, and position:
A buffer's capacity is the number of elements it contains. The capacity of a buffer is never negative and never changes.
A buffer's limit is the index of the first element that should not be read or written. A buffer's limit is never negative and is never greater than its capacity.
A buffer's position is the index of the next element to be read or written. A buffer's position is never negative and is never greater than its limit.
There is one subclass of this class for each non-boolean primitive type.
Each subclass of this class defines two categories of get and put operations:
Relative operations read or write one or more elements starting at the current position and then increment the position by the number of elements transferred. If the requested transfer exceeds the limit then a relative get operation throws a BufferUnderflowException and a relative put operation throws a BufferOverflowException ; in either case, no data is transferred.
Absolute operations take an explicit element index and do not affect the position. Absolute get and put operations throw an IndexOutOfBoundsException if the index argument exceeds the limit.
Data may also, of course, be transferred in to or out of a buffer by the I/O operations of an appropriate channel, which are always relative to the current position.
A buffer's mark is the index to which its position will be reset when the reset method is invoked. The mark is not always defined, but when it is defined it is never negative and is never greater than the position. If the mark is defined then it is discarded when the position or the limit is adjusted to a value smaller than the mark. If the mark is not defined then invoking the reset method causes an InvalidMarkException to be thrown.
The following invariant holds for the mark, position, limit, and capacity values:
0 <= mark <= position <= limit <= capacity
A newly-created buffer always has a position of zero and a mark that is undefined. The initial limit may be zero, or it may be some other value that depends upon the type of the buffer and the manner in which it is constructed. The initial content of a buffer is, in general, undefined.
In addition to methods for accessing the position, limit, and capacity values and for marking and resetting, this class also defines the following operations upon buffers:
#clear makes a buffer ready for a new sequence of channel-read or relative put operations: It sets the limit to the capacity and the position to zero.
#flip makes a buffer ready for a new sequence of channel-write or relative get operations: It sets the limit to the current position and then sets the position to zero.
#rewind makes a buffer ready for re-reading the data that it already contains: It leaves the limit unchanged and sets the position to zero.
Every buffer is readable, but not every buffer is writable. The mutation methods of each buffer class are specified as optional operations that will throw a ReadOnlyBufferException when invoked upon a read-only buffer. A read-only buffer does not allow its content to be changed, but its mark, position, and limit values are mutable. Whether or not a buffer is read-only may be determined by invoking its isReadOnly method.
Buffers are not safe for use by multiple concurrent threads. If a buffer is to be used by more than one thread then access to the buffer should be controlled by appropriate synchronization.
Methods in this class that do not otherwise have a value to return are specified to return the buffer upon which they are invoked. This allows method invocations to be chained; for example, the sequence of statements
can be replaced by the single, more compact statementb.flip(); b.position(23); b.limit(42);
b.flip().position(23).limit(42);
Invoke this method before using a sequence of channel-read or put operations to fill this buffer. For example:
buf.clear(); // Prepare buffer for reading in.read(buf); // Read data
This method does not actually erase the data in the buffer, but it is named as if it did because it will most often be used in situations in which that might as well be the case.
The equals method implements an equivalence relation
on non-null object references:
x, x.equals(x) should return
true.
x and y, x.equals(y)
should return true if and only if
y.equals(x) returns true.
x, y, and z, if
x.equals(y) returns true and
y.equals(z) returns true, then
x.equals(z) should return true.
x and y, multiple invocations of
x.equals(y) consistently return true
or consistently return false, provided no
information used in equals comparisons on the
objects is modified.
x,
x.equals(null) should return false.
The equals method for class Object implements
the most discriminating possible equivalence relation on objects;
that is, for any non-null reference values x and
y, this method returns true if and only
if x and y refer to the same object
(x == y has the value true).
Note that it is generally necessary to override the hashCode method whenever this method is overridden, so as to maintain the general contract for the hashCode method, which states that equal objects must have equal hash codes.
After a sequence of channel-read or put operations, invoke this method to prepare for a sequence of channel-write or relative get operations. For example:
buf.put(magic); // Prepend header in.read(buf); // Read data into rest of buffer buf.flip(); // Flip buffer out.write(buf); // Write header + data to channel
This method is often used in conjunction with the compact method when transferring data from one place to another.
java.util.Hashtable.
The general contract of hashCode is:
hashCode method on each of
the two objects must produce the same integer result.
As much as is reasonably practical, the hashCode method defined by class Object does return distinct integers for distinct objects. (This is typically implemented by converting the internal address of the object into an integer, but this implementation technique is not required by the JavaTM programming language.)
wait methods.
The awakened thread will not be able to proceed until the current thread relinquishes the lock on this object. The awakened thread will compete in the usual manner with any other threads that might be actively competing to synchronize on this object; for example, the awakened thread enjoys no reliable privilege or disadvantage in being the next thread to lock this object.
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner of this object's monitor. A thread becomes the owner of the object's monitor in one of three ways:
synchronized statement
that synchronizes on the object.
Class, by executing a
synchronized static method of that class.
Only one thread at a time can own an object's monitor.
wait methods.
The awakened threads will not be able to proceed until the current thread relinquishes the lock on this object. The awakened threads will compete in the usual manner with any other threads that might be actively competing to synchronize on this object; for example, the awakened threads enjoy no reliable privilege or disadvantage in being the next thread to lock this object.
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner
of this object's monitor. See the notify method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.
Invoking this method neither changes nor discards the mark's value.
Invoke this method before a sequence of channel-write or get operations, assuming that the limit has already been set appropriately. For example:
out.write(buf); // Write remaining data buf.rewind(); // Rewind buffer buf.get(array); // Copy data into array
toString method returns a string that
"textually represents" this object. The result should
be a concise but informative representation that is easy for a
person to read.
It is recommended that all subclasses override this method.
The toString method for class Object
returns a string consisting of the name of the class of which the
object is an instance, the at-sign character `@', and
the unsigned hexadecimal representation of the hash code of the
object. In other words, this method returns a string equal to the
value of:
getClass().getName() + '@' + Integer.toHexString(hashCode())
The current thread must own this object's monitor. The thread
releases ownership of this monitor and waits until another thread
notifies threads waiting on this object's monitor to wake up
either through a call to the notify method or the
notifyAll method. The thread then waits until it can
re-obtain ownership of the monitor and resumes execution.
As in the one argument version, interrupts and spurious wakeups are possible, and this method should always be used in a loop:
synchronized (obj) {
while (<condition does not hold>)
obj.wait();
... // Perform action appropriate to condition
}
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner
of this object's monitor. See the notify method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.The current thread must own this object's monitor.
This method causes the current thread (call it T) to place itself in the wait set for this object and then to relinquish any and all synchronization claims on this object. Thread T becomes disabled for thread scheduling purposes and lies dormant until one of four things happens:
A thread can also wake up without being notified, interrupted, or timing out, a so-called spurious wakeup. While this will rarely occur in practice, applications must guard against it by testing for the condition that should have caused the thread to be awakened, and continuing to wait if the condition is not satisfied. In other words, waits should always occur in loops, like this one:
synchronized (obj) {
while (<condition does not hold>)
obj.wait(timeout);
... // Perform action appropriate to condition
}
(For more information on this topic, see Section 3.2.3 in Doug Lea's
"Concurrent Programming in Java (Second Edition)" (Addison-Wesley,
2000), or Item 50 in Joshua Bloch's "Effective Java Programming
Language Guide" (Addison-Wesley, 2001).
If the current thread is interrupted by another thread while it is waiting, then an InterruptedException is thrown. This exception is not thrown until the lock status of this object has been restored as described above.
Note that the wait method, as it places the current thread into the wait set for this object, unlocks only this object; any other objects on which the current thread may be synchronized remain locked while the thread waits.
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner
of this object's monitor. See the notify method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.
This method is similar to the wait method of one
argument, but it allows finer control over the amount of time to
wait for a notification before giving up. The amount of real time,
measured in nanoseconds, is given by:
1000000*timeout+nanos
In all other respects, this method does the same thing as the method of one argument. In particular, wait(0, 0) means the same thing as wait(0).
The current thread must own this object's monitor. The thread releases ownership of this monitor and waits until either of the following two conditions has occurred:
notify method
or the notifyAll method.
timeout
milliseconds plus nanos nanoseconds arguments, has
elapsed.
The thread then waits until it can re-obtain ownership of the monitor and resumes execution.
As in the one argument version, interrupts and spurious wakeups are possible, and this method should always be used in a loop:
synchronized (obj) {
while (<condition does not hold>)
obj.wait(timeout, nanos);
... // Perform action appropriate to condition
}
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner
of this object's monitor. See the notify method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.