Question

According to Java specification, the size of a char data type is 16 bits or two bytes.

So, I have the written following code:

private static final int BUFFER_SIZE=1024;
char[] buffer=new char[BUFFER_SIZE];
BufferedReader br= new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));

while (true){
    byteFromStream=in.read(buffer);
    if (byteFromStream==-1) break;
    totalBytesLoaded=totalBytesLoaded+byteFromStream*2;
}

But for some strange reason I am reading more bytes then is available on the stream, according to the specification of read() return numbers of characters actually read by stream.

Oh, I am getting total stream size by

bytesTotal=conn.getContentLength();

Which is working pretty fine as I myself uploaded files on the server and I know their sizes.

Answer 1

The method returns the amount of read characters. That value does not need to be multiplied by 2, especially since you cannot make that general assumption about the byte size of a character from a stream.

The amount of bytes per character depends on the character encoding (it can be 1 byte for example). The reader component knows that and only tells you the amount of read characters.