How can I access a byte array as shorts in Java

Question

I have a an array of byte, size n, that really represents an array of short of size n/2. Before I write the array to a disk file I need to adjust the values by adding bias values stored in another array of short. In C++ I would just assign the address of the byte array to a pointer for a short array with a cast to short and use pointer arithmetic or use a union.

How may this be done in Java - I'm very new to Java BTW.

Answer 1

You can wrap your byte array with java.nio.ByteBuffer.

byte[] bytes = ...
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.wrap( bytes );

// you may or may not need to do this
//buffer.order( ByteOrder.BIG/LITTLE_ENDIAN );

ShortBuffer shorts = buffer.asShortBuffer( );

for ( int i = 0, n=shorts.remaining( ); i < n; ++i ) {
    final int index = shorts.position( ) + i;

    // Perform your transformation
    final short adjusted_val = shortAdjuster( shorts.get( index ) );

    // Put value at the same index
    shorts.put( index, adjusted_val );
}

// bytes now contains adjusted short values