PURE Java™ 2

An Overview of the Main Stream, Reader, and Writer Classes

The parent class of all input streams is the abstract class InputStream.

InputStream provides a limited number of methods, such as read(), read(byte[] b), mark(), and reset(). There are a number of InputStream subclasses. These include

• FileInputStream—Used for reading files at the byte level

• SequenceInputStream—Used for combining multiple files into one input stream

• PipedInputStream—Used for reading a stream through a pipe from another Thread or the like

• DataInputStream—Used for reading Java primitives, such as float, char, int, and boolean, as well as for reading in UTF strings

• ObjectInputStream—Used for reading in both primitives and serialized objects

• PushbackInputStream—Used for reading ...