Serial.end and SoftwareSerial.end - does it clear the character buffer?

I have a need to start off with an empty character buffer so that subsequent calls to Serial.read only returns new information. If I call Serial.end and then Serial.begin(4800) again, does that give me an empty character buffer?

while(Serial.available()>0) Serial.read();

codlink:

while(Serial.available()>0) Serial.read();

Thanks! I have a follow up question but it is long so I will put it in its own thread under the Programming forum.