UnsupportedOperationException with converting byte[] to float[]

Question

I\'m trying to convert a byte[] to a float[] by putting the byte[] in a ByteBuffer, converting this to a FloatBuffer (.asFloatBuffer), and then converting this to a

Answer 1

public static float[] toFloatArray(byte[] bytes) {
    float[] floats = new float[bytes.length/4];
    ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes).asFloatBuffer().get(floats).array();
    return floats;
}

The reason why you can't do return ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes).asFloatBuffer().array(); is that it creates a view of this byte buffer as a float buffer. Which means it's using the same memory. It's lightning fast, but needs a place to put it in memory that isn't being treated as a float[] AND byte[] hence why it can't give you the data back without new memory.

public static void convertFloatArray(byte[] bytes, float[] floats) {
    ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes).asFloatBuffer().get(floats,0,bytes.length/4);
}

It's just the class doesn't make its own memory but fiddles with the memory you give it, which is awesome, but could be confusing at times.

Answer 2

    private static float[] toFloatArray(byte[] bytes) {
        ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes);
        FloatBuffer fb = buffer.asFloatBuffer();

        float[] floatArray = new float[fb.limit()];
        fb.get(floatArray);


        return floatArray;
    }

ex:

     byte[] bytes = {65,-56,0,0 , 65,-56,0,0};
     float[] result = toFloatArray(bytes);   

     //print 25.0 25.0
     System.out.println(Arrays.toString(result));

Answer 3

The simple way to get a float from a byte[] array wrapped by a ByteBuffer is to use getFloat() which reads the next 4 bytes and returns the generated float. You can do this in a loop, if your byte[] contains more than 4 bytes. Note that the method throws

BufferUnderflowException - If there are fewer than four bytes remaining in this buffer

You can get it from the FloatBuffer as well

buffer.asFloatBuffer().get();

if you want but array() throws an UnsupportedOperationException if the instance's hb field is null. If you look at the source code from Oracle JDK 7, there is a comment

final float[] hb;  // Non-null only for heap buffers

If you run your code, you will notice the returned FloatBuffer is a ByteBufferAsFloatBufferB, not a HeapFloatBuffer.