StAX getCharacterOffset method help!

[Oliver Ng]

Using StAX, I'm trying to write a small progress meter so I know how far along in parsing the XML file I am. (ie 50% of 100% file complete)

In the location class, there is Location.getCharacterOffset() which is supposed to return either a byte or character position. It seems to be returning a character position, and I dont know how to make it return in bytes.

Does anyone know how I can do this? or does anyone know how I could get the total characters in a file without reading through the whole file?

Its a 100 mb file, so I'm trying to be efficient here.

Thanks a lot for any input, or ideas

XMLInputFactory factory = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();
File file = new File(filename);                
reader = factory.createXMLStreamReader(new FileInputStream(file));
 
int location = reader.getLocation().getCharacterOffset();

[ March 19, 2005: Message edited by: Oliver Ng ]

[Lasse Koskela]

This might be a bit far fetched, but...

Would it be feasible to first (before handing the file to the parser) read the first n bytes of the file into a String and make an assumption that the ratio of bytes to characters is statistically constant throughout the file, regardless of the encoding?

[Oliver Ng]

you've totally lost me there, could you clarify please?