Java tutorial
import java.io.FilterReader; import java.io.Reader; import java.io.StringReader; public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { char[] cbuf = new char[6]; int i = 0; Reader r = new StringReader("ABCDEF"); FilterReader fr = new FilterReader(r) { }; // read data of len 4, to the buffer i = fr.read(cbuf, 2, 4); System.out.println("No. of characters read: " + i); // read till the end of the char buffer for (char c : cbuf) { // checks for the empty character in buffer if ((byte) c == 0) c = '-'; System.out.print(c); } } }