DataInput.skipBytes(int n)

In Java, DataInput defines an interface to reconstruct primitives from an InputStream (usualy written earlier with a DataOutput). Besides methods like readInt, readLong, readDouble etc, it also provides a method skipBytes(int n). What do you expect this method to do? Do you spot the problem in this piece of code?

DataInputStream input = new DataInputStream(
   new BufferedInputStream(
       new FileInputStream(file)));
input.skipBytes(2);

I wasn't aware of any possible problem until I enabled the maven findBugs plugin on our continuous build server. It warned me about not checking the return value of the skipBytes(int n) method. What? What can it possibly return? If you read the javadoc of the method (what I probably should have done in the first place), you'll see that it returns the number of bytes actually skipped. That is because the method skipBytes doesn't actually skip bytes... it only attempts to skip bytes.

So here's my question: what am I supposed to do when the return value is less then the number of bytes I wanted to skip? Do I need to loop until it is OK? Do I need a fall back implementation? Do I need to raise a runtime exception? Do I need to Thread.yield() and hope another thread will get the chance to fill the buffer of my underlying BufferedInputStream? The only thing the javadoc has to say about this, is that there may be many different reasons why the actual number of skipped bytes differs from the number of bytes you wanted to skip. It seems to me that, depending on the reason, another strategy might be appropriate... but of course there is no way to know what the reason was if it would happen.

Although I could probably have looked into a completely different solution using Java NIO, I ended up writing this:

// skip 2 bytes
input.readByte();
input.readByte();