question: public String readString ( ) throws IOException { int firstByte = readByte ( ) ; int length = readInt ( firstByte , PREFIX_8_BITS ) ; byte [ ] encoded = new byte [ length ] ; bytesLeft -= length ; in . readFully ( encoded ) ; return new String ( encoded , "UTF-8" ) ; }
target:  Reads a UTF-8 encoded string. Since ASCII is a subset of UTF-8, this method may be used to read strings that are known to be ASCII-only.