BTW, Yesterday someone else pointed out to me that the java.nio ByteArray class has all kinds of flexible methods for dealing with big/little endian data, and at first glance it looks like that might be the case.
Oh yes so it does. I've not done much with the nio package but from a quick read of the API docs it looks like it should do what you want.
Not unusual for working with a new language,
Or one you've been using for years when the libraries are so big. There are so many packages it's just not possible to know all of them in detail.
And hopefully I won't find out that "nio" makes "io" classes obsolete, or that they shouldn't be used or are deprecated!
No they definitely don't do that. They are additional to rather than replacements for.