To fill or overwrite a buffer space with some content or data, we can use the fill() method in the Buffer instance in Node.js.

Let's say we have a Buffer with 10 bytes of memory allocated like this,

// create buffer
const buff = Buffer.alloc(10);

console.log(buff); // <Buffer 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00>

If you look into the contents of the buff object, you can see that the buffer is filled with 0.

Now let's fill this with 2 instead of 0, for that we can use the fill() method in the buff object like this,

// create buffer
const buff = Buffer.alloc(10);

// fill the buffer with integer 2
buff.fill(2);

// Buffer filled with integer 2
console.log(buff); // <Buffer 02 02 02 02 02 02 02 02 02 02>

We can also define the starting point where we want to start filling the buffer and also the ending point where we want to stop filling the buffer.

The starting point is defined as the second argument to the fill() method and the endpoint is defined as the third argument to the fill() method.

// create buffer
const buff = Buffer.alloc(10);

// fill the buffer with integer 2
// but start filling from the 2nd byte and
// stop filling at 4th byte
buff.fill(2, 2, 4);

console.log(buff); // <Buffer 00 00 02 02 00 00 00 00 00 00>

See the example live in repl.it.

Points to note

• The method accepts a string, integer, or a Buffer as the content to fill the buffer as the first argument.
• The method accepts the starting point or the offset as the second argument.
• The method accepts the ending point as the third argument.
• The method returns a reference to the buffer instance.

Feel free to share if you found this useful 😃.

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