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javac++iojava-native-interface

Non-Blocking File Reads

Is there a non-blocking file read API in java? If not would it be wise to build one in C++ and call it from a java app via JNI?

Solution

  • No, FileChannel does not extend SelectableChannel.

    Probably because not all OSes support it.

    Windows does, and in theory you could write a windows-specific C++ library and call it via JNI, but it is a lot of work to integrate this with java.nio.

    I would rather have a worker thread copy the file contents to a pipe and do non-blocking reads on the other end of the pipe.