The Java TM Tutorial

| Start of Tutorial > Start of Trail > Start of Lesson | Search

Trail: Essential Java Classes
Lesson: Reading and Writing (but no 'rithmetic)

## Overview of I/O Streams

### Character Streams

> `Reader` and `Writer` are the abstract superclasses for character streams in `java.io`. `Reader` provides the API and partial implementation for readers--streams that read 16-bit characters--and `Writer` provides the API and partial implementation for writers--streams that write 16-bit characters.

> Subclasses of `Reader` and `Writer` implement specialized streams and are divided into two categories: those that read from or write to data sinks (shown in gray in the following figures) and those that perform some sort of processing (shown in white). The figure shows the class hierarchies for the `Reader` and `Writer` classes.

> This figure has been reduced to fit on the page.
> Click the image to view it at its natural size.

> This figure has been reduced to fit on the page.
> Click the image to view it at its natural size.
> Most programs should use readers and writers to read and write information. This is because they both can handle any character in the Unicode character set (while the byte streams are limited to ISO-Latin-1 8-bit bytes).

### Byte Streams

> Programs should use the byte streams, descendants of `InputStream` and `OutputStream`, to read and write 8-bit bytes. `InputStream` and `OutputStream` provide the API and some implementation for input streams (streams that read 8-bit bytes) and output streams (streams that write 8-bit bytes). These streams are typically used to read and write binary data such as images and sounds.

> As with `Reader` and `Writer`, subclasses of `InputStream` and `OutputStream` provide specialized I/O that falls into two categories: data sink streams and processing streams. Figure 56 shows the class hierarchies for the byte streams.

> As mentioned, two of the byte stream classes, `ObjectInputStream` and `ObjectOutputStream`, are used for object serialization. These classes are fully covered in Object Serialization.

### Understanding the I/O Superclasses

> `Reader` and `InputStream` define similar APIs but for different data types. For example, `Reader` contains these methods for reading characters and arrays of characters:

> >     int read()
> >     int read(char cbuf[])
> >     int read(char cbuf[], int offset, int length)

> `InputStream` defines the same methods but for reading bytes and arrays of bytes:

> >     int read()
> >     int read(byte cbuf[])
> >     int read(byte cbuf[], int offset, int length)

> Also, both `Reader` and `InputStream` provide methods for marking a location in the stream, skipping input, and resetting the current position.

> `Writer` and `OutputStream` are similarly parallel. `Writer` defines these methods for writing characters and arrays of characters:

> >     int write(int c)
> >     int write(char cbuf[])
> >     int write(char cbuf[], int offset, int length)

> And `OutputStream` defines the same methods but for bytes:

> >     int write(int c)
> >     int write(byte cbuf[])
> >     int write(byte cbuf[], int offset, int length)

> All of the streams--readers, writers, input streams, and output streams--are automatically opened when created. You can close any stream explicitly by calling its `close` method. Or the garbage collector can implicitly close it, which occurs when the object is no longer referenced.

> Learn how to use a selected assortment of these two types of streams in the next two sections:

> - Using the Data Sink Streams
> - Using the Processing Streams

| Start of Tutorial > Start of Trail > Start of Lesson | Search