Problem with InputStream in a MIDlet

Question

I am doing some client/server networking using a socket connection in a MIDlet.
When I make the socket connection I get a 220 reply.
i.e "220 smtp.comcast.net"
I read the status code from that response and then send the server my next command. (HELO). so far so good.
The server returns a status code of 250. I can see that in my packet sniffer. again, this is a good thing.
The problem is with my input stream. When I last read the input stream ch = is.read();
the input stream didn't empty itself.
So every time I get a response from the server, it appends to the last input I had.
in this case:
"220 smtp.comcast.net 250 comcast.net".
I only expect to see:
"250 comcast.net"
I've tried is.close() and then reopening it when I expect a response from the server. This does not flush it.
What can I do to rectify this?
Thanks in advance,
Mike

Answer 1

or better, use a buffer to write to and give the number of read bytes to it:
InputStream is; // from somewhere else in the MIDlet
String rec;
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
byte[] buf = new byte[1024];
               while( (c=is.read(buf)) != -1 ){
                    rec=new String(buf,0,c);
                    sb.append(rec);
               };c is the number of bytes which were read from the input stream.
so i save the read bytes into a new string, but only bytes 0-c from the bytearray buf.
then, i append the whole string to a stringbuffer for later use.