Help with API implementation!

Question

Dear All,
I should be grateful if you could shed some light on the implementation of the public int read(b[], int off, int len) throws IOException method present in the ByteArrayInputStream class in java.io, since the definition, in my opinion is a bit awkward. infact it says that in order to find out the number of byte read, you have to add k, which is the length of bytes read to pos, the index + 1.
Having access to the implementations of methods in the API, would definitely make a better programmer, I think.
Thanks for you help!
Luka

Answer 1

The Javadoc comment for read isn't very good since it also tells you how it's implemented rather than simply what it does.
All you need to know to use it is this:
1) you tell it the number of bytes to read
2) it returns the actual number of bytes read, k
3) the bytes read will start at b[k]
The source for all the core classes is available if you really want to look at it. It's in a file called src.zip or src.jar located in the installation directory of your J2SDK.
Hope this helps.