Issues while Encoding...

Question

Hello,
I need to write a byte stream onto the network, what i plan to do is take the byte arrays i have, convert them to a string and recreate the byte array using the string i receive on the other end.
Let me illustrate my problem...
1. bss is what i wish to transfer
byte bss[] = new byte[1];
bss[0] = (byte) (129 & 0xff);
System.out.println("Byte value: " + bss[0]);
System.out.println("Int value: " + ( bss[0] & 0xff ));
2. convert bss to a string
StringBuffer ston = new StringBuffer();
ston.append(new String(bss,"UTF-8"));
3. Recreate bss from string
System.out.println(ston.toString());
byte bss2[] = ston.toString().getBytes();
System.out.println("Byte value: " + bss2[0]);
System.out.println("Int value: " + ( bss2[0] & 0xff ));
For some reason my output is:-
Byte value: -127
Int value: 129
Byte value: 63
Int value: 63
I need the same byte value and int value after recreating the bytes using getBytes(), i think there is some issue with the encoding issues coming up, wondering if anyone knows a fix for what i'm trying to do..
Thanks
Neville

Answer 1

nmehta wrote:
Hello,
I need to write a byte stream onto the network, what i plan to do is take the byte arrays i have, convert them to a string and recreate the byte array using the string i receive on the other end.Why? Converting arbitrary bytes to text and back again is likely to damage your data. Not to mention that the process is a waste of time because you could just send the bytes over the network as the bytes they are.