I have to read a 53 MB file character by character. When I do it in C++ using ifstream, it is completed in milliseconds but using Java InputStream it takes several minutes. Is it normal for Java to be this slow or am I missing something?
Also, I need to complete the program in Java (it uses servlets from which I have to call the functions which process these characters). I was thinking maybe writing the file processing part in C or C++ and then using Java Native Interface to interface these functions with my Java programs... How is this idea?
Can anyone give me any other tip... I seriously need to read the file faster. I tried using buffered input, but still it is not giving performance even close to C++.
Edited: My code spans several files and it is very dirty so I am giving the synopsis
import java.io.*;
public class tmp {
public static void main(String args[]) {
try{
InputStream file = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream("1.2.fasta"));
char ch;
while(file.available()!=0) {
ch = (char)file.read();
/* Do processing */
}
System.out.println("DONE");
file.close();
}catch(Exception e){}
}
}
I ran this code with a 183 MB file. It printed "Elapsed 250 ms".
final InputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream("file.txt"));
final long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
int cnt = 0;
final byte[] buf = new byte[1000];
while (in.read(buf) != -1) cnt++;
in.close();
System.out.println("Elapsed " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - start) + " ms");