Buffers

Buffers in Janet are the mutable version of strings. Since strings in Janet can hold any sequence of bytes, including zeros, buffers share this same property and can be used to hold any arbitrary memory, which makes them very simple but versatile data structures. They can be used to accumulate small strings into a large string, to implement a bitset, or to represent sound or images in a program.

Creating Buffers

A Buffer literal looks like a string literal, but prefixed with an at symbol @.

(def my-buf @"This is a buffer.")

(defn make-buffer
 "Creates a buffer"
 []
 @"a new buffer")

(make-buffer) # -> @"a new buffer"
(= (make-buffer) (make-buffer)) # -> false
# All buffers are unique - buffers are equal only to themselves.

Getting bytes from a buffer

To get bytes from a buffer, use the get function that works on all builtin data structures. Bytes in a buffer are indexed from 0, and each byte is considered an integer from 0 to 255.

(def buf @"abcd")

(get buf 0) # -> 97
(0 buf) # -> 97

# Use destructuring to print 4
# bytes of a buffer.
(let [[b1 b2 b3 b4] buf]
 (print b1)
 (print b2)
 (print b3)
 (print b4))

One can also use the string/slice or buffer/slice functions to get sub strings (or sub buffers) from inside any sequence of bytes.

(def buf @"abcdefg")
(def buf1 (buffer/slice buf)) # -> @"abcdef", but a different buffer
(def buf2 (buffer/slice buf 2)) # -> @"cdefg"
(def buf3 (buffer/slice buf 2 -2)) # -> @"cdef"

# string/slice works the same way, but returns strings.

Setting bytes in a buffer

Buffers are mutable, meaning we can add bytes or change bytes in an already created buffer. Use the put function to set individual bytes in a buffer at a given byte index. Buffers will be expanded as needed if an index out of the range is provided.

(def b @"")
(put b 0 97) #-> @"a"
(put b 10 97) #-> @"a\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0a"

The set special form also works for setting bytes in a buffer.

(def b @"")
(set (b 0) 97) #-> @"a"
(set (b 10) 97) #-> @"a\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0a"

The main difference between set and put is that set will return the byte value, while put will return the buffer value.

Pushing bytes to a buffer

There are also many functions to push data into a buffer. Since buffers are commonly used to accumulate data, there are a variety of functions for pushing data into a buffer.

• buffer/push-byte
• buffer/push-word
• buffer/push-string

See the documentation for these functions in the Core API.