This class defines six categories of operations upon byte buffers:

• Absolute and relative get and put methods that read and write single bytes;

• Relative bulk get methods that transfer contiguous sequences of bytes from this buffer into an array;

• Relative bulk put methods that transfer contiguous sequences of bytes from a byte array or some other byte buffer into this buffer;

• Absolute and relative get and put methods that read and write values of other primitive types, translating them to and from sequences of bytes in a particular byte order;

• Methods for creating view buffers, which allow a byte buffer to be viewed as a buffer containing values of some other primitive type; and

• Methods for compacting, duplicate(), and slicing a byte buffer.

Byte buffers can be created either by allocation, which allocates space for the buffer's content, or by wrapping an existing byte array into a buffer.

Direct vs. non-direct buffers

A byte buffer is either direct or non-direct. Given a direct byte buffer, the Java virtual machine will make a best effort to perform native I/O operations directly upon it. That is, it will attempt to avoid copying the buffer's content to (or from) an intermediate buffer before (or after) each invocation of one of the underlying operating system's native I/O operations.

A direct byte buffer may be created by invoking the allocateDirect(int) factory method of this class. The buffers returned by this method typically have somewhat higher allocation and deallocation costs than non-direct buffers. The contents of direct buffers may reside outside of the normal garbage-collected heap, and so their impact upon the memory footprint of an application might not be obvious. It is therefore recommended that direct buffers be allocated primarily for large, long-lived buffers that are subject to the underlying system's native I/O operations. In general it is best to allocate direct buffers only when they yield a measureable gain in program performance.

A direct byte buffer may also be created by java.nio.channels.FileChannel.map(java.nio.channels.FileChannel.MapMode,long,long) a region of a file directly into memory. An implementation of the Java platform may optionally support the creation of direct byte buffers from native code via JNI. If an instance of one of these kinds of buffers refers to an inaccessible region of memory then an attempt to access that region will not change the buffer's content and will cause an unspecified exception to be thrown either at the time of the access or at some later time.

Whether a byte buffer is direct or non-direct may be determined by invoking its isDirect method. This method is provided so that explicit buffer management can be done in performance-critical code.

Access to binary data

This class defines methods for reading and writing values of all other primitive types, except boolean. Primitive values are translated to (or from) sequences of bytes according to the buffer's current byte order, which may be retrieved and modified via the order methods. Specific byte orders are represented by instances of the ByteOrder class. The initial order of a byte buffer is always ByteOrder.BIG_ENDIAN.

For access to heterogeneous binary data, that is, sequences of values of different types, this class defines a family of absolute and relative get and put methods for each type. For 32-bit floating-point values, for example, this class defines:

 float  getFloat()
 float  getFloat(int index)
  void  putFloat(float f)
  void  putFloat(int index, float f)

Corresponding methods are defined for the types char, short, int, long, and double. The index parameters of the absolute get and put methods are in terms of bytes rather than of the type being read or written.

For access to homogeneous binary data, that is, sequences of values of the same type, this class defines methods that can create views of a given byte buffer. A view buffer is simply another buffer whose content is backed by the byte buffer. Changes to the byte buffer's content will be visible in the view buffer, and vice versa; the two buffers' position, limit, and mark values are independent. The asFloatBuffer() method, for example, creates an instance of the FloatBuffer class that is backed by the byte buffer upon which the method is invoked. Corresponding view-creation methods are defined for the types char, short, int, long, and double.

View buffers have three important advantages over the families of type-specific get and put methods described above:

• A view buffer is indexed not in terms of bytes but rather in terms of the type-specific size of its values;

• A view buffer provides relative bulk get and put methods that can transfer contiguous sequences of values between a buffer and an array or some other buffer of the same type; and

• A view buffer is potentially much more efficient because it will be direct if, and only if, its backing byte buffer is direct.

The byte order of a view buffer is fixed to be that of its byte buffer at the time that the view is created.

Invocation chaining

Methods in this class that do not otherwise have a value to return are specified to return the buffer upon which they are invoked. This allows method invocations to be chained. The sequence of statements

 bb.putInt(0xCAFEBABE);
 bb.putShort(3);
 bb.putShort(45);

 bb.putInt(0xCAFEBABE).putShort(3).putShort(45);

The new buffer's position will be zero, its limit will be its capacity, and its mark will be undefined. Whether or not it has a backing array is unspecified.

The new buffer's position will be zero, its limit will be its capacity, and its mark will be undefined. It will have a backing array, and its array offset will be zero.

The new buffer will be backed by the given byte array; that is, modifications to the buffer will cause the array to be modified and vice versa. The new buffer's capacity will be array.length, its position will be offset, its limit will be offset + length, and its mark will be undefined. Its backing array will be the given array, and its array offset will be zero.

The new buffer will be backed by the given byte array; that is, modifications to the buffer will cause the array to be modified and vice versa. The new buffer's capacity and limit will be array.length, its position will be zero, and its mark will be undefined. Its backing array will be the given array, and its array offset will be zero.

The content of the new buffer will start at this buffer's current position. Changes to this buffer's content will be visible in the new buffer, and vice versa; the two buffers' position, limit, and mark values will be independent.

The new buffer's position will be zero, its capacity and its limit will be the number of bytes remaining in this buffer, and its mark will be undefined. The new buffer will be direct if, and only if, this buffer is direct, and it will be read-only if, and only if, this buffer is read-only.

The content of the new buffer will be that of this buffer. Changes to this buffer's content will be visible in the new buffer, and vice versa; the two buffers' position, limit, and mark values will be independent.

The new buffer's capacity, limit, position, and mark values will be identical to those of this buffer. The new buffer will be direct if, and only if, this buffer is direct, and it will be read-only if, and only if, this buffer is read-only.

The content of the new buffer will be that of this buffer. Changes to this buffer's content will be visible in the new buffer; the new buffer itself, however, will be read-only and will not allow the shared content to be modified. The two buffers' position, limit, and mark values will be independent.

The new buffer's capacity, limit, position, and mark values will be identical to those of this buffer.

If this buffer is itself read-only then this method behaves in exactly the same way as the duplicate method.

Writes the given byte into this buffer at the current position, and then increments the position.

Writes the given byte into this buffer at the given index.

This method transfers bytes from this buffer into the given destination array. If there are fewer bytes remaining in the buffer than are required to satisfy the request, that is, if length > remaining(), then no bytes are transferred and a BufferUnderflowException is thrown.

Otherwise, this method copies length bytes from this buffer into the given array, starting at the current position of this buffer and at the given offset in the array. The position of this buffer is then incremented by length.

In other words, an invocation of this method of the form src.get(dst, off, len) has exactly the same effect as the loop

     for (int i = off; i < off + len; i++)
         dst[i] = src.get(); 

This method transfers bytes from this buffer into the given destination array. An invocation of this method of the form src.get(a) behaves in exactly the same way as the invocation

     src.get(a, 0, a.length) 

This method transfers the bytes remaining in the given source buffer into this buffer. If there are more bytes remaining in the source buffer than in this buffer, that is, if src.remaining() > remaining(), then no bytes are transferred and a BufferOverflowException is thrown.

Otherwise, this method copies n = src.remaining() bytes from the given buffer into this buffer, starting at each buffer's current position. The positions of both buffers are then incremented by n.

In other words, an invocation of this method of the form dst.put(src) has exactly the same effect as the loop

     while (src.hasRemaining())
         dst.put(src.get()); 

This method transfers bytes into this buffer from the given source array. If there are more bytes to be copied from the array than remain in this buffer, that is, if length > remaining(), then no bytes are transferred and a BufferOverflowException is thrown.

Otherwise, this method copies length bytes from the given array into this buffer, starting at the given offset in the array and at the current position of this buffer. The position of this buffer is then incremented by length.

In other words, an invocation of this method of the form dst.put(src, off, len) has exactly the same effect as the loop

     for (int i = off; i < off + len; i++)
         dst.put(a[i]); 

This method transfers the entire content of the given source byte array into this buffer. An invocation of this method of the form dst.put(a) behaves in exactly the same way as the invocation

     dst.put(a, 0, a.length) 

If this method returns true then the array and arrayOffset methods may safely be invoked.

Modifications to this buffer's content will cause the returned array's content to be modified, and vice versa.

Invoke the hasArray method before invoking this method in order to ensure that this buffer has an accessible backing array.

If this buffer is backed by an array then buffer position p corresponds to array index p + arrayOffset().

Invoke the hasArray method before invoking this method in order to ensure that this buffer has an accessible backing array.

The bytes between the buffer's current position and its limit, if any, are copied to the beginning of the buffer. That is, the byte at index p = position() is copied to index zero, the byte at index p + 1 is copied to index one, and so forth until the byte at index limit() - 1 is copied to index n = limit() - 1 - p. The buffer's position is then set to n+1 and its limit is set to its capacity. The mark, if defined, is discarded.

The buffer's position is set to the number of bytes copied, rather than to zero, so that an invocation of this method can be followed immediately by an invocation of another relative put method.

Invoke this method after writing data from a buffer in case the write was incomplete. The following loop, for example, copies bytes from one channel to another via the buffer buf:

 buf.clear();          // Prepare buffer for use
 while (in.read(buf) >= 0 || buf.position != 0) {
     buf.flip();
     out.write(buf);
     buf.compact();    // In case of partial write
 }

The hash code of a byte buffer depends only upon its remaining elements; that is, upon the elements from position() up to, and including, the element at limit() - 1.

Because buffer hash codes are content-dependent, it is inadvisable to use buffers as keys in hash maps or similar data structures unless it is known that their contents will not change.

Two byte buffers are equal if, and only if,

1. They have the same element type,

2. They have the same number of remaining elements, and

3. The two sequences of remaining elements, considered independently of their starting positions, are pointwise equal.

A byte buffer is not equal to any other type of object.

Two byte buffers are compared by comparing their sequences of remaining elements lexicographically, without regard to the starting position of each sequence within its corresponding buffer.

A byte buffer is not comparable to any other type of object.