Correlation between the array buffer and the read of a stream

Question

        InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(str, encoding);
        ArrayList<String> al = new ArrayList<String>(128900);
        char[] ar = new char[26];
        while(isr.read(ar) != -1) {
                        al.add(new String(ar);
        }Why is that in my case of a 2.8 MB text file, when just doing a System.currentmillis I can faster times for a char array of 24-26 ?
What is the correlation?

Answer 1

Here is the full code
It reads a txt file with 128900 words in UTF-8
        InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(str, encoding);
        //__log.debug(isr.markSupported());
        //128900
        ArrayList<String> al = new ArrayList<String>(128900);
        char[] ar = new char[24];
        char[] word = new char[26];
        int offset = 0;
        int length = 0;
        while( (length=isr.read(ar)) != -1) {
            for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
                if(ar[i] == '\r' || ar[i] == '\n') {
                    if(offset != 0) {
                        al.add(new String(word,0,offset));
                        offset = 0;
                } else {
                    word[offset] = ar;
offset++;
This code executes in 600ms with a value of 24-26 in the array ar
If you change that value to more or less, code executes more slowly
NOTE: we know advance that the max length of a word is 26 char that why we have a word array of 26