CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javanio
banjara
banjara

Reputation: 3890

Why ByteBuffer doesn't provide method to read write boolean data type

Why ByteBuffer class doesn't provide method to read write boolean data type, is there any workaround?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 6242

Answers (5)

seismic
seismic

Reputation: 19

The DataOutputStream has a writeBoolean(boolean v) method.

Internally, it does write(v ? 1 : 0). Using this convention, your code would look like

boolean v = <true|false>....
byteBuffer.put(v ? (byte)1 : (byte)0);

Upvotes: 0

Peter Lawrey
Peter Lawrey

Reputation: 533790

There is no standard on how a boolean should be written. There is any number of workarounds such as writing 0 or 1, 0 or -1, n or y , f or T, or the strings "false" or "true", or whatever you like. Or as others have suggested you might want to write only one bit instead of using one or more bytes.

Upvotes: 3

user207421
user207421

Reputation: 311023

Because on the wire there is no such thing as a boolean data type. There are just bytes, which can be treated as (a) booleans, (b) sequences of ASCII, (c) taken 2 at a time as shorts, (d) taken 4 at a time as ints, (e) taken 8 at a time as longs, ...

Upvotes: 2

Bathsheba
Bathsheba

Reputation: 234845

It's because boolean (1 bit) is the only plain-old data data type that's smaller than a Byte (8 bits).

So you are motivated to pack booleans for efficiency. But the techniques for that are best left to the user.

Upvotes: 2

Kayaman
Kayaman

Reputation: 73568

Boolean is a 1-bit datatype. ByteBuffer works with bytes. You'll have to decide yourself how you'll represent a boolean as a byte (such as 0 for false and 1 for true, or 0 for false and non-zero for true).

Upvotes: 6

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