/*
Copyright (C) SYSTAP, LLC DBA Blazegraph 2006-2016. All rights reserved.
Contact:
SYSTAP, LLC DBA Blazegraph
2501 Calvert ST NW #106
Washington, DC 20008
licenses@blazegraph.com
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
*/
/*
* Created on Aug 27, 2009
*/
package com.bigdata.io;
import com.bigdata.btree.keys.KeyBuilder;
/**
* Interface for a slice of a backing byte[].
*
* @author <a href="mailto:thompsonbry@users.sourceforge.net">Bryan Thompson</a>
* @version $Id$
*/
public interface IByteArraySlice {
/**
* The backing byte[]. This method DOES NOT guarantee that the backing array
* reference will remain constant. Some implementations use an extensible
* backing byte[] and will replace the reference when the backing buffer is
* extended.
*/
public byte[] array();
/**
* The start of the slice in the {@link #array()}.
*/
public int off();
/**
* The length of the slice in the {@link #array()}.
*
* Note: {@link IByteArraySlice#len()} has different semantics for some
* concrete implementations. {@link ByteArrayBuffer#len()} always returns
* the capacity of the backing byte[] while {@link ByteArrayBuffer#pos()}
* returns the #of bytes written onto the backing buffer. In contrast,
* {@link KeyBuilder#len()} is always the #of bytes written onto the backing
* buffer.
*/
public int len();
/**
* Return a copy of the data in the slice.
*
* @return A new array containing data in the slice.
*/
byte[] toByteArray();
}