Input, Output, and Java

You are already somewhat familiar with Java I/O through the use of the System.out object, which you have used to display text information on the screen. This module digs deeper into Java's support for I/O and shows you how to read and write information using special I/O objects called streams. You will also learn how to use streams to perform I/O on text files.

In Java 1.1, input and output were achieved using the classes in the java.io package, such as InputStream and OutputStream for byte-based streams, and Reader and Writer for character-based streams. These classes provide methods for reading and writing data, and can be used to read from and write to various sources such as files, network sockets, and in-memory buffers. For example, to read from a file, you could use a FileInputStream object and call its read() method, and to write to a file, you could use a FileOutputStream object and call its write() method.