Mohan K

Heli
I dont know if this will help u.
but try reading the input as character instead of byte and zero out the higher byte.
eg. instead of
byte b = 0xff ;
use
char c = 0xffff ; // your input stream
long l = 0x00ff & c ;
System.out.println("l = c & 0x00ff: l = " + l); //255
2 problems though:
1. You will be one off when you read the next byte (if you are using absolute positioning to read it will not be a problem)
2. I am not sure if you will run into little endian/big endian formats problems