Commenting Code

Have you ever written code that reads from a BufferedReader? Suppose you read someone else's code that said

//There is a BufferedReader r

StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
int i;
while ((i = r.read()) != -1)
sb.append((char)i);

What do you think ? will you change it to the more normal

int i;
char[] data = new char[1024];
while ((i = r.read(data,0,data.length)) != -1)
sb.append(data);
Edit: Embarassingly the above code is wrong, but the code is only illustrative , reading a character at a time v/s reading chunks of it

Which is more efficient? Which is more 'performant'?

And finally if you read the original code with an additional comment

StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
int i;
// under JIT, testing seems to show this simple loop is as fast
// as any of the alternatives
while ((i = r.read()) != -1)
sb.append((char)i);

would you even bother?

Code snippet taken from ImportSupport.java - jakarta-taglibs-standard-1.1.2-src.