How do I encode/decode UTF-16LE byte arrays with a BOM?

Question

I need to encode/decode UTF-16 byte arrays to and from java.lang.String. The byte arrays are given to me with a Byte Order Marker (BOM), and I need to encoded b

Answer 1

    ByteArrayOutputStream byteArrayOutputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream(string.length() * 2 + 2);
    byteArrayOutputStream.write(new byte[]{(byte)0xFF,(byte)0xFE});
    byteArrayOutputStream.write(string.getBytes("UTF-16LE"));
    return byteArrayOutputStream.toByteArray();

EDIT: Rereading your question, I see you would rather avoid the double array allocation altogether. Unfortunately the API doesn't give you that, as far as I know. (There was a method, but it is deprecated, and you can't specify encoding with it).

I wrote the above before I saw your comment, I think the answer to use the nio classes is on the right track. I was looking at that, but I'm not familiar enough with the API to know off hand how you get that done.