/*

   Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
   contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
   this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
   The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
   (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
   the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at

       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

   Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
   distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
   WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
   See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
   limitations under the License.

 */
package org.apache.batik.util.io;

import java.io.IOException;

/**
 * This interface represents an object which decodes characters from a
 * stream of bytes.
 *
 * @author <a href="mailto:stephane@hillion.org">Stephane Hillion</a>
 * @version $Id: CharDecoder.java 475477 2006-11-15 22:44:28Z cam $
 */
public interface CharDecoder {
    
    /**
     * This constant represents the end of stream character.
     */
    int END_OF_STREAM = -1;

    /**
     * Reads the next character.
     * @return a character or END_OF_STREAM.
     */
    int readChar() throws IOException;

    /**
     * Disposes the associated resources.
     */
    void dispose() throws IOException;
}
