Fastest way to write an array of integers to a file in Java?

Question

As the title says, I\'m looking for the fastest possible way to write integer arrays to files. The arrays will vary in size, and will realistically contain anywhere between

Answer 1

I would use FileChannel from the nio package and ByteBuffer. This approach seems (on my computer) give 2 to 4 times better write performance:

Output from program:

normal time: 2555
faster time: 765

This is the program:

public class Test {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

        // create a test buffer
        ByteBuffer buffer = createBuffer();

        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        {
            // do the first test (the normal way of writing files)
            normalToFile(new File("first"), buffer.asIntBuffer());
        }
        long middle = System.currentTimeMillis(); 
        {
            // use the faster nio stuff
            fasterToFile(new File("second"), buffer);
        }
        long done = System.currentTimeMillis();

        // print the result
        System.out.println("normal time: " + (middle - start));
        System.out.println("faster time: " + (done - middle));
    }

    private static void fasterToFile(File file, ByteBuffer buffer) 
    throws IOException {

        FileChannel fc = null;

        try {

            fc = new FileOutputStream(file).getChannel();
            fc.write(buffer);

        } finally {

            if (fc != null)
                fc.close();

            buffer.rewind();
        }
    }

    private static void normalToFile(File file, IntBuffer buffer) 
    throws IOException {

        DataOutputStream writer = null;

        try {
            writer = 
                new DataOutputStream(new BufferedOutputStream(
                        new FileOutputStream(file)));

            while (buffer.hasRemaining())
                writer.writeInt(buffer.get());

        } finally {
            if (writer != null)
                writer.close();

            buffer.rewind();
        }
    }

    private static ByteBuffer createBuffer() {
        ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(4 * 25000000);
        Random r = new Random(1);

        while (buffer.hasRemaining()) 
            buffer.putInt(r.nextInt());

        buffer.rewind();

        return buffer;
    }
}