[PDFBOX-5451] Avoid exposing underlying byte array

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 3.0.0 PDFBox
• Fix Version/s: 3.0.0 PDFBox
• Component/s: Parsing
• Assignee: Andreas Lehmkühler
• Reporter: Andreas Lehmkühler
• Created: 05/Jun/22 11:38
• Updated: 18/Aug/23 05:46
• Resolved: 30/Jun/22 06:15

Description

When creating a COSString the given byte array is cloned. As in most cases the array is just an intermediate object we should remove that to reduce the memory footprint.
Furthermore the getBytes returns the internal byte array so that I don't see any reason not to use the given byte array itself instead of cloning it

My first idea was to remove the clone when setting the value of a COSString to reduce the memory footprint. After some discussion we came to the conclusion that it would make sense to do so if COSStrings were immutable. But to make COSStrings immutable some refactoring is needed and I won't do that for 3.0.0.

Saying that, I've reverted my first change and and added a clone in getBytes so that the underlying byte array isn't exposed at all.