Below some frequently asked questions about CoralFIX.

1. How to get string values from a FIX message without producing garbage?
   You can simply call getCharSequence(FixTag). CoralFIX maintains a StringBuilder pool under-the-hood and will always return a different instance with the string contents as a CharSequence. Just keep in mind that the pool is reset on every new FIX message, in other words, the StringBuilders from the pool will be re-used/overwritten on the following FIX message received. Therefore, although that’s seldom the use-case, if you need to store/save the string value across multiple FIX messages you must copy the contents from the CharSequence returned to somewhere else.
2. Can I get string values as a byte array so I can use them as keys to a ByteArrayMap?
   Yes! Below an example:

   // first write a space (' ') to all bytes of the byte array
   ByteArrayUtils.clear(orderIdByteArray);
   
   // read the string value into the byte array
   int orderIdLength = fixMsg.readBytes(FixTags.OrderID, orderIdByteArray);
   
   if (orderIdLength <= 0) {
       // OrderID tag not present... nothing was read...
   } else {
       // use the byte array as the key to a ByteArrayMap
       Order order = orderByteArrayMap.get(orderIdByteArray);
       // (...)
   }