Byte array of unknown length in java

Question

I am constructing an array of bytes in java and I don\'t know how long the array will be.

I want some tool like Java\'s StringBuffer that you can just call .append

Answer 1

Just to extend the previous answer, you can use ByteArrayOutputStream and it's method public void write(byte[] b, int off, int len), where parameters are:

b - the data

off - the start offset in the data

len - the number of bytes to write

If you want to use it as a "byte builder" and insert byte by byte, you can use this:

byte byteToInsert = 100;
ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
baos.write(new byte[]{byteToInsert}, 0, 1);

Then you can use baos.toString() method to convert the array to string. The advantage is when you need to set up encoding of input, you can simply use i.e.:

baos.toString("Windows-1250")