How to know actual size of byte buffer`s content in nodejs?

Question

I get files as byte buffers and cannot use fs.stat() method. So I am try to use buf.length but this length refers to the amount of memory allocated for the buffer object and not actually the content size. For example I have file with with size 22,449 bytes. buf.length returns for 39804 for it.

Answer 1

You need byteLength:

var buff = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/test.txt');
console.log(Buffer.byteLength(buff));

For node 0.10.21 you can try this:

Update buffer.toSTring() is unsafe, since buffers are meant to store binary data and toString() will attempt to do character encoding translation which will corrupt the binary data.

console.log(buff.toString().length);