Should I buffer the InputStream or the InputStreamReader?

Question

What are the differences (if any) between the following two buffering approaches?

Reader r1 = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in, \"UTF-8\"), bufferSize         


        

Answer 1

r1 is also more convenient when you read line-based stream as BufferedReader supports readLine method. You don't have to read content into a char array buffer or chars one by one. However, you have to cast r1 to BufferedReader or use that type explicitly for the variable.

I often use this code snippet:

BufferedReader br = ...
String line;
while((line=br.readLine())!=null) {
  //process line
}