IWordSerializer.java

/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.solr.util.hll;

/**
 * Writes 'words' of fixed width, in sequence, to a byte array.
 */
interface IWordSerializer {

    /**
     * Writes the word to the backing array.
     *
     * @param  word the word to write.
     */
    void writeWord(final long word);

    /**
     * Returns the backing array of <code>byte</code>s that contain the serialized
     * words.
     * @return the serialized words as a <code>byte[]</code>.
     */
    byte[] getBytes();

}