From 680397168efb3a0c8c7527915fae0a62c0f13345 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "google-labs-jules[bot]"
 <161369871+google-labs-jules[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:13:56 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] Refactor readFileSync().toString() to readFileSync(...,
 'utf8')

Co-authored-by: vishnu-madhavan-git <237662584+vishnu-madhavan-git@users.noreply.github.com>
---
 .jules/bolt.md                                           | 3 +++
 packages/expo-brownfield/plugin/src/common/filesystem.ts | 9 +++++----
 packages/pod-install/src/index.ts                        | 2 +-
 3 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 .jules/bolt.md

diff --git a/.jules/bolt.md b/.jules/bolt.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000000..83839c16a0d5d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.jules/bolt.md
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+## 2024-03-24 - File Reading Micro-optimization
+**Learning:** In Node.js, passing the encoding string (e.g., 'utf8') directly to `fs.readFileSync` avoids an unnecessary intermediate memory allocation for a Buffer, making it slightly more efficient than calling `.toString()` on the returned Buffer.
+**Action:** When refactoring file reads in Node.js code, prefer passing the encoding string directly to `fs.readFileSync`.
diff --git a/packages/expo-brownfield/plugin/src/common/filesystem.ts b/packages/expo-brownfield/plugin/src/common/filesystem.ts
index dfbcceaeb05b2d..a1f9762a7c0c0c 100644
--- a/packages/expo-brownfield/plugin/src/common/filesystem.ts
+++ b/packages/expo-brownfield/plugin/src/common/filesystem.ts
@@ -26,13 +26,14 @@ const maybeReadOverwrittenTemplate = (template: string, platform?: PlatformStrin
   try {
     accessSync(path.join(process.cwd(), '.brownfield-templates'));
     if (existsSync(path.join(process.cwd(), '.brownfield-templates', template))) {
-      return readFileSync(path.join(process.cwd(), '.brownfield-templates', template)).toString();
+      return readFileSync(path.join(process.cwd(), '.brownfield-templates', template), 'utf8');
     }
 
     if (existsSync(path.join(process.cwd(), '.brownfield-templates', platform ?? '.', template))) {
       return readFileSync(
-        path.join(process.cwd(), '.brownfield-templates', platform ?? '.', template)
-      ).toString();
+        path.join(process.cwd(), '.brownfield-templates', platform ?? '.', template),
+        'utf8'
+      );
     }
     // eslint-disable-next-line no-empty
   } catch {}
@@ -55,7 +56,7 @@ const readTemplate = (template: string, platform?: PlatformString): string => {
     throw new Error(`Template ${template} doesn't exist at ${templatePath}`);
   }
 
-  return readFileSync(templatePath).toString();
+  return readFileSync(templatePath, 'utf8');
 };
 
 const createFileFromTemplateInternal = (
diff --git a/packages/pod-install/src/index.ts b/packages/pod-install/src/index.ts
index 15184c3f113372..56650359e3df6b 100644
--- a/packages/pod-install/src/index.ts
+++ b/packages/pod-install/src/index.ts
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ async function runAsync(maybeProjectDirectory?: string): Promise<void> {
       process.exit(1);
     }
 
-    const jsonData = JSON.parse(readFileSync(packageJsonPath).toString());
+    const jsonData = JSON.parse(readFileSync(packageJsonPath, 'utf8'));
     const hasExpoPackage = jsonData.dependencies?.hasOwnProperty('expo');
 
     if (hasExpoPackage) {