net.sf.mmm.util.io.api
Interface ByteProcessable

All Known Subinterfaces:

ProcessableByteArrayBuffer

All Known Implementing Classes:

AbstractByteArrayBufferBuffer, BufferInputStream, ByteArrayBufferBuffer, LookaheadByteArrayBufferBuffer

public interface ByteProcessable

This is the interface for an object providing data represented as sequence of bytes - typically some sort of buffer.
Following the idiom separations of concerns the idea is to allow fast and easy processing of the data without any dependency or knowledge of the internals of this data-provider.
The user of this API can implement a ByteProcessor (e.g. as anonymous or inner class) with its custom logic. He is entirely independent from the underlying implementation of this interface that may use one big byte-array to store the provided data or have it sliced into multiple smaller byte-arrays.

Since:

1.0.1

Author:

Joerg Hohwiller (hohwille at users.sourceforge.net)

Method Summary

long	process(ByteProcessor processor, long length) This method processes the number of bytes given by length (as far as available) using the given processor.

Method Detail

process

long process(ByteProcessor processor,
             long length)

This method processes the number of bytes given by length (as far as available) using the given processor.

Parameters:

processor - is the ByteProcessor called to process the bytes. It may be called multiple types if the data is sliced into multiple byte-arrays.

length - is the desired number of bytes to process. The value has to be greater or equal to 0. A value of 0 will have no effect. If you want to process all available data to the end of stream or buffer you may use Long.MAX_VALUE.

Returns:

the number of bytes that have actually been processed. For a sufficient length this will typically be equal to length. However if the end of the data has been reached, a smaller value is returned. The value will always be greater or equal to 0.