Java: Efficiency of the readLine method of the BufferedReader and possible alternatives

Question

We are working to reduce the latency and increase the performance of a process written in Java that consumes data (xml strings) from a socket via the readLine() method of the Bu

Answer 1

The answer to your first question is yes and no. If the buffer already contains the line terminator it will return immediately, however if it does not contain the terminator then it will try to fill the buffer, but not necessarily fully. It will only read until there is some new data (at least one char) or EOF is reached.

One of the nice things about java is that the libraries are open source, so if you have a full copy of the JDK you can look at the source yourself to answer these types of questions. I use eclipse as my IDE and by default if you place the cursor over a class name and press F3 it will take you to the source (this is how I obtained the answer above). The caveat is with the standard distribution the source for some of the internal classes / native code is not available.

For your second question, I would say generally no, as the logic used by BufferedReader is the generally the same any code would need to recreate to achieve the same task. The only thing that might slow BufferedReader is internally it uses a StringBuffer, which is synchronized, instead of the unsynchronized StringBuilder.