Grab a segment of an array in Java without creating a new array on heap

Question

I'm looking for a method in Java that will return a segment of an array. An example would be to get the byte array containing the 4th and 5th bytes of a byte array. I don't want to have to create a new byte array in the heap memory just to do that. Right now I have the following code:

doSomethingWithTwoBytes(byte[] twoByteArray);

void someMethod(byte[] bigArray)
{
      byte[] x = {bigArray[4], bigArray[5]};
      doSomethingWithTwoBytes(x);
}

I'd like to know if there was a way to just do doSomething(bigArray.getSubArray(4, 2)) where 4 is the offset and 2 is the length, for example.

Answer 1

Disclaimer: This answer does not conform to the constraints of the question:

I don't want to have to create a new byte array in the heap memory just to do that.

(Honestly, I feel my answer is worthy of deletion. The answer by @unique72 is correct. Imma let this edit sit for a bit and then I shall delete this answer.)

---

I don't know of a way to do this directly with arrays without additional heap allocation, but the other answers using a sub-list wrapper have additional allocation for the wrapper only – but not the array – which would be useful in the case of a large array.

That said, if one is looking for brevity, the utility method Arrays.copyOfRange() was introduced in Java 6 (late 2006?):

byte [] a = new byte [] {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7};

// get a[4], a[5]

byte [] subArray = Arrays.copyOfRange(a, 4, 6);