Java in a Nutshell

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24.8 java.io.CharArrayWriter (JDK 1.1)

This class is a character output stream that uses an internal character array as the destination of characters written to it. When you create a CharArrayWriter, you may optionally specify an initial size for the character array, but you do not specify the character array itself--this array is managed internally by the CharArrayWriter, and grows as necessary to accommodate all the characters written to it. The toString() and toCharArray() methods return a copy of all characters written to the stream, either as a string or as an array of characters.

CharArrayWriter defines the standard write(), flush(), and close() methods that all Writer subclasses do. It also defines a few other useful methods. size() returns the number of characters that have been written to the stream. reset() resets the stream to its initial state, with an empty character array; this is more efficient than creating a new CharArrayWriter. Finally, writeTo() writes the contents of the internal character array to some other specified character stream.

CharArrayWriter is the character-stream analog of ByteArrayOutputStream, and is quite similar to StringWriter.

public class CharArrayWriter extends Writer {
    // Public Constructors
            public CharArrayWriter();
            public CharArrayWriter(int initialSize);
    // Protected Instance Variables
            protected char[] buf;
            protected int count;
    // Public Instance Methods
            public void close();  // Defines Writer
            public void flush();  // Defines Writer
            public void reset();
            public int size();
            public char[] toCharArray();
            public String toString();  // Overrides Object
            public void write(int c);  // Overrides Writer
            public void write(char[] c, int off, int len);  // Defines Writer
            public void write(String str, int off, int len);  // Overrides Writer
            public void writeTo(Writer out) throws IOException;
}

Hierarchy:

Object->Writer->CharArrayWriter


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