Unsafe: efficiently comparing two byte arrays

[Paul Sandoz]

On Feb 27, 2014, at 3:52 PM, Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On 02/26/2014 03:42 PM, Paul Sandoz wrote:
> 
>> A common reason why Unsafe is used is to more efficiently compare two unsigned byte arrays, viewing those byte arrays as long arrays.
> 
> Why not simply provide ByteBuffer.forArray(byte[]) ?  Then we'd have all the
> ByteBuffer intrinsics for put() and get() operations.
> 

Good point, even if it does require the creation of two ByteBuffer instances.

An implementation of Arrays.compare could do that if things were suitably intrinsified, which i am not sure is the case as of today.

I will do some measurements and report back.

Paul.