The DataInput interface provides for reading bytes from a binary stream and reconstructing from them data in any of the Java primitive types. There is also a facility for reconstructing a String from data in modified UTF-8 format.

It is generally true of all the reading routines in this interface that if end of file is reached before the desired number of bytes has been read, an EOFException (which is a kind of IOException) is thrown. If any byte cannot be read for any reason other than end of file, an IOException other than EOFException is thrown. In particular, an IOException may be thrown if the input stream has been closed.

Modified UTF-8

Implementations of the DataInput and DataOutput interfaces represent Unicode strings in a format that is a slight modification of UTF-8. (For information regarding the standard UTF-8 format, see section 3.9 Unicode Encoding Forms of The Unicode Standard, Version 4.0). Note that in the following table, the most significant bit appears in the far left-hand column.

The differences between this format and the standard UTF-8 format are the following:

• The null byte '\u0000' is encoded in 2-byte format rather than 1-byte, so that the encoded strings never have embedded nulls.
• Only the 1-byte, 2-byte, and 3-byte formats are used.
• Supplementary characters are represented in the form of surrogate pairs.

Reads some bytes from an input stream and stores them into the buffer array b. The number of bytes read is equal to the length of b.

This method blocks until one of the following conditions occurs:

• b.length bytes of input data are available, in which case a normal return is made.
• End of file is detected, in which case an EOFException is thrown.
• An I/O error occurs, in which case an IOException other than EOFException is thrown.

If b is null, a NullPointerException is thrown. If b.length is zero, then no bytes are read. Otherwise, the first byte read is stored into element b[0], the next one into b[1], and so on. If an exception is thrown from this method, then it may be that some but not all bytes of b have been updated with data from the input stream.

Reads len bytes from an input stream.

This method blocks until one of the following conditions occurs:

• len bytes of input data are available, in which case a normal return is made.
• End of file is detected, in which case an EOFException is thrown.
• An I/O error occurs, in which case an IOException other than EOFException is thrown.

If b is null, a NullPointerException is thrown. If off is negative, or len is negative, or off+len is greater than the length of the array b, then an IndexOutOfBoundsException is thrown. If len is zero, then no bytes are read. Otherwise, the first byte read is stored into element b[off], the next one into b[off+1], and so on. The number of bytes read is, at most, equal to len.

Reads eight input bytes and returns a long value. Let a-h be the first through eighth bytes read. The value returned is:

(((long)(a & 0xff) << 56) |
  ((long)(b & 0xff) << 48) |
  ((long)(c & 0xff) << 40) |
  ((long)(d & 0xff) << 32) |
  ((long)(e & 0xff) << 24) |
  ((long)(f & 0xff) << 16) |
  ((long)(g & 0xff) <<  8) |
  ((long)(h & 0xff)))

This method is suitable for reading bytes written by the writeLong method of interface DataOutput.

Reads the next line of text from the input stream. It reads successive bytes, converting each byte separately into a character, until it encounters a line terminator or end of file; the characters read are then returned as a String. Note that because this method processes bytes, it does not support input of the full Unicode character set.

If end of file is encountered before even one byte can be read, then null is returned. Otherwise, each byte that is read is converted to type char by zero-extension. If the character '\n' is encountered, it is discarded and reading ceases. If the character '\r' is encountered, it is discarded and, if the following byte converts to the character '\n', then that is discarded also; reading then ceases. If end of file is encountered before either of the characters '\n' and '\r' is encountered, reading ceases. Once reading has ceased, a String is returned that contains all the characters read and not discarded, taken in order. Note that every character in this string will have a value less than \u0100, that is, (char)256.

Reads in a string that has been encoded using a modified UTF-8 format. The general contract of readUTF is that it reads a representation of a Unicode character string encoded in modified UTF-8 format; this string of characters is then returned as a String.

First, two bytes are read and used to construct an unsigned 16-bit integer in exactly the manner of the readUnsignedShort method . This integer value is called the UTF length and specifies the number of additional bytes to be read. These bytes are then converted to characters by considering them in groups. The length of each group is computed from the value of the first byte of the group. The byte following a group, if any, is the first byte of the next group.

If the first byte of a group matches the bit pattern 0xxxxxxx (where x means "may be 0 or 1"), then the group consists of just that byte. The byte is zero-extended to form a character.

If the first byte of a group matches the bit pattern 110xxxxx, then the group consists of that byte a and a second byte b. If there is no byte b (because byte a was the last of the bytes to be read), or if byte b does not match the bit pattern 10xxxxxx, then a UTFDataFormatException is thrown. Otherwise, the group is converted to the character:

(char)(((a & 0x1F) << 6) | (b & 0x3F))

(char)(((a & 0x0F) << 12) | ((b & 0x3F) << 6) | (c & 0x3F))

If end of file is encountered at any time during this entire process, then an EOFException is thrown.

After every group has been converted to a character by this process, the characters are gathered, in the same order in which their corresponding groups were read from the input stream, to form a String, which is returned.

The writeUTF method of interface DataOutput may be used to write data that is suitable for reading by this method.