I was looking for a toImmutable() method on the Buf object so I could pass it to an Actor. If there is one, please tell me and update the docs to refer to it in the intro to "Buf".

Um... sys::StrBuf#toStr? As an immutable StrBuf is just a Str, right!?

Oh, so there's a sys::Buf also!

Still, as it's a pointer into a block of bytes, it doesn't make sense to me to make it immutable - b'cos then the pointer becomes fixed!

Can you not send over whatever your Buf is backed by? e.g. the file, map or byte block?

I mean a binary Buf that holds bytes/octets, not a Str. Something like Java's byte[].

I'm not sure how to get access to the bytes the Buf is backed by - if you create a Buf using Buf.make() it allocates the buffer internally and I don't see any method to access the internal buffer.

No there is no current immutable version of Buf. I've considered adding it, but don't want to add a bunch of extra checks to byte access since at that level the overhead becomes meaninful.

If it is small I will often use Buf.toBase64 as a Str.

If passing Bufs back and forth to Actors, I'm usually careful and just optimize to pass the Buf itself using Unsafe.

OK, thanks.

Is there any way to wrap a byte[] received from Java into a Buf instance for use in Fantom?

Is there any way to wrap a byte[] received from Java into a Buf instance for use in Fantom?

Not very easily, I'll add a hook to Interop or to ByteArray for that

OK thanks!