Faculty of Information Technology - Programming 2

Lecture 10
Input/Output (I/O)

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Introduction of Data Streams

• Data input/output activities (inputting data from the

keyboard, reading data from a file, writing data to
the screen, writing to a file, writing to disk, printing
to a printer...) are all referred to as streams.
• All streams operate on the same principle even
when they are associated with different physical
devices.

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Introduction of Data Streams
• Input stream is a stream that allows the
program to read data from a source such as
keyboard, file, scanner...

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Introduction of Data Streams
• Output stream is a stream that allows the
program to write data to it to be sent to a
destination such as screen, file, printer...

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Inheritance hierarchy of Input Streams

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Inheritance hierarchy of Output Streams

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Byte streams
• Using byte streams for binary data
input/output
• All byte streams inherit from 2 classes:
• InputStream
• OutputStream
• There are many byte stream classes:
• FileInputStream
• FileOutputStream
• They differ in initialization methods but
operate in the same way.
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FileInputStream/FileOutputStream

• This stream is used to work with binary files.

• Use FileInputStream to read data from
binary files.
• Use FileOutputStream to write data to
binary files.

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FileOutputStream
• FileOutputStream is an output stream used to
write data to binary files.

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 FileInputStream
• FileInputStream is the input stream for reading
data from binary files.

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 DataInputStream/DataOutputStream
• These two streams help us read/write primitive
data.
• Use read<Type>() to read primitive data from
DataInputStream.
• readInt()
• readDouble()…
• Use write<Type>(Type) to write primitive data to
DataOutputStream.
• writeBoolean(boolean)
• writeInt(int)…

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DataOutputStream

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DataInputStream

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 ObjectInputStream/ObjectOutputStream

• This stream helps us read/write objects.

• Use readObject() to read objects from
DataInputStream.
• Use writeObject(Serializable) to write objects to
DataOutputStream.
• Note:
• Only objects created from classes implementing
the Serializable interface can be read/written.

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interface Serializable

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ObjectOutputStream

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ObjectInputStream

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Character Streams
• Byte streams are powerful and flexible.
However, if you want to store files containing
Unicode text, character streams are the best
choice because the advantage of character
streams is that they operate directly on
Unicode characters.
• All character streams are inherited from 2
abstract classes: Reader and Writer.

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FileWriter/ FileReader

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BufferedReader/ BufferedWriter

• This stream is used to work with buffered

character streams.
• Use BufferedReader to work with buffered input
text streams.
• Use BufferedWriter to work with buffered output
text streams.

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BufferedWriter

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BufferedReader

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Using Try… Catch in Input/Output

• When input/outputting data, there are 'checked'

exceptions that must be caught when writing
code, usually these exceptions are:
• FileNotFoundException
• EOFException
• NotSerializableException
• IOException

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Using Try… Catch in Input/Output

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Summary
• Data Streams
• Inheritance hierarchy of Input Streams/ Output
Streams
• Byte streams
• FileInputStream/FileOutputStream
• DataInputStream/DataOutputStream
• ObjectInputStream/ObjectOutputStream
• FileWriter/ FileReader
• BufferedReader/ BufferedWriter
• Using Try… Catch in Input/Output

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