Java I/O

The Filter Stream Subclasses

The java.io package contains many useful filter stream classes. The BufferedInputStream and BufferedOutputStream classes buffer reads and writes by first putting data into a buffer (an internal array of bytes). Thus, an application can read or write bytes to the stream without necessarily calling the underlying native methods. The data is read from or written into the buffer in blocks; subsequent accesses go straight to the buffer. This improves performance in many situations. Buffered input streams also allow the reader to back up and reread data.

The java.io.PrintStream class, which System.out and System.err are instances of, allows very simple printing of primitive values, objects, and string literals. It uses the platform’s default character encoding to convert characters into bytes. This class traps all IOExceptions and is primarily intended for debugging. System.out and System.err are the most popular examples of the PrintStream class, but you can connect a PrintStream filter to other output streams as well. For example, you can chain a PrintStream to a FileOutputStream to easily write text into a file.

The PushbackInputStream class has a one-byte pushback buffer so a program can “unread” the last character read. The next time data is read from the stream, the unread character is reread.

The DataInputStream and DataOutputStream classes read and write primitive Java data types and strings in a machine-independent way. (Big-endian for integer types, ...