Best way to read structured binary files with Java

Question

I have to read a binary file in a legacy format with Java.

In a nutshell the file has a header consisting of several integers, bytes and fixed-length char arrays, f

Answer 1

If you would be using Preon, then all you would have to do is this:

public class Header {
    @BoundNumber int version;
    @BoundNumber byte type;
    @BoundNumber int beginOfData;
    @BoundString(size="15") String id;
}

Once you have this, you create Codec using a single line:

Codec
 codec = Codecs.create(Header.class);

And you use the Codec like this:

Header header = Codecs.decode(codec, file);