🚀 go-pugleaf

I am planning to convert a fairly large application from C++ to Java,
and have just now gotten to the point of having read enough about Java
and played with jbuilder enough to get up the nerve to attempt it.

My application needs to deal with large  bitmap images, and to read
and write them without taking all day doing it.  In C/C++, I use fopen
statements with the binary (b) flag set and then fread and fwrite
statements using something akin to sector-sized reads, e.g.
fread(buff, 4096, 1, stream);  I assume the nearest thing to that in
Java would be the ByteArrayInputStream class and its associated read
and write statements.  Is that correct or is there a better choice
there somewhere?  

Also, I don't see anything resembling a particular flag for binary
files with ByteArrayInputStream;  can I assume that byte streams are
assumed binary?

Generally, you do cobol-like io in C/C++ by using structures and then
fread/fwrite statements which look like:
fread(&structAitem, sizeof(struct A), 1, stream) etc.  What would be
the equivalent of that in Java?

Keeping track of arrays of file names:  I use CStringArray lists in
VC++ and associative arrays in Tcl:  what's best in Java?  It looks
like you have a vector class and then a container class package.

DLL's?  Am I correct in assuming that DLL's and shared libraries would
make no sense and don't exist within the Java world and, if so, what
exactly (I would guess packages) takes their place.


Ted Holden
medved@ix.deniz.com