Prepared by : A.Alzubair Hassan Kassala university Dept. Computer Science Lecture 2 I/O Streams 1

Prepared by :Prepared by :

A.Alzubair HassanA.Alzubair HassanKassala university Kassala university Dept. Computer Dept. Computer Science Science

Lecture 2

I/O StreamsI/O Streams

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In this Lecture

• Introduction• Java I/O• Types Of Streams • Byte Streams • Character Streams

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Introduction

• So far we have used variables and arrays for sorting data inside the programs.

• This approach poses the following problems

1. The data is lost either when a variable goes out of scope or when the program is terminated.

2. It is difficult to handle large volumes of data using variables and arrays.

• We can overcome these problems by storing data on secondary storage devices.

• The data is stored in these devices using the concept of files.

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Overview

• Java I/O– The java.io package– Streams, Readers and Writers

• Files– Working with Files

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Java I/O – The Basics

• Java I/O is based around the concept of a stream– Ordered sequence of information (bytes) coming from a

source, or going to Desteation

– Simplest stream reads/writes only a single byte, or an array of bytes at a time

• Designed to be platform-independent • The stream concept is very generic

– Can be applied to many different types of I/O

– Files, Network, Memory, Processes, etc

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Java I/O – The Basics

• The java.io package contains all of the I/O classes.– Many classes specialised for particular kinds of stream

operations, e.g. file I/O

• Reading/writing single bytes is quite limited– So, it includes classes which provide extra functionality– e.g. buffering, reading numbers and Strings (not bytes),

etc.

• Results in large inheritance hierarchy, with separate trees for input and output stream classes

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Types Of Streams • Byte Streams handle I/O of raw binary data.

• Character Streams handle I/O of character data, automatically handling translation to and from the local character set.

• Buffered Streams optimize input and output by reducing the number of calls to the native API.

• I/O from the Command Line describes the Standard Streams and the Console object.

• Data Streams handle binary I/O of primitive data type and String values.

• Object Streams handle binary I/O of objects.

File I/O

• File Objects help you to write platform-independent code that examines and manipulates files.

• Random Access Files handle non-sequential file access.

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Byte Streams

• Programs use byte streams to perform input and output of 8-bit bytes. All byte stream classes are descended from InputStream and OutputStream.

• There are many byte stream classes. To demonstrate how byte streams work, we'll focus on the file I/O byte streams, FileInputStream and FileOutputStream. Other kinds of byte streams are used in much the same way; they differ mainly in the way they are constructed.

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Java I/O - InputStream

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Java I/O – InputStreams

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Java I/O – Using InputStreams

• Basic pattern for I/O programming is as follows:

Open a stream

While there’s data to read

Process the data

Close the stream

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Java I/O – Using InputStreams

• I/O in Java:InputStream in = new FileInputStream(“c:\\temp\\

myfile.txt”);

int b = in.read();

//EOF is signalled by read() returning -1

while (b != -1)

{

//do something…

b = in.read();

}

in.close();

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Java I/O – Using InputStreams

• But using buffering is more efficient, therefore we always nest our streams…

InputStream inner = new FileInputStream(“c:\\temp\\myfile.txt”);InputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(inner);int b = in.read();//EOF is signalled by read() returning -1while (b != -1){ //do something… b = in.read();}in.close();

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Java I/O – Using InputStreams

• We’ve omitted exception handling in the previous examples

• Almost all methods on the I/O classes (including constructors) can throw an IOException or a subclass.

• Always wrap I/O code in try…catch blocks to handle errors.

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Java I/O – Using InputStreams

InputStream in = null;try{ InputStream inner = new FileInputStream(“c:\\temp\\

myfile.txt”); in = new BufferedInputStream(inner); //process file} catch (IOException e){ e.printStackTrace();}finally{ try { in.close(); } catch (Exception e) {}}

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Java I/O – OutputStream

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Java I/O – OutputStreams

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Java I/O – Using InputStreams

• Basic pattern for output is as follows:

Open a stream

While there’s data to write

Write the data

Close the stream

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Java I/O – Using OutputStreams

• Output in Java:OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(“c:\\temp\\

myfile.txt”);

while (…)

{

out.write(…);

}

out.close();

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Java I/O – Using OutputStreams

OutputStream out = null;try{ OutputStream inner = new FileOutputStream(“c:\\temp\\

myfile.txt”); out = new BufferedOutputStream(inner); //write data to the file} catch (IOException e){ e.printStackTrace();}finally{ try { out.close(); } catch (Exception e) {}}

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Using Byte Streams

• We'll explore FileInputStream and FileOutputStream by examining an example program named CopyBytes, which uses byte streams to copy xanadu.txt, one byte at a time.

•  import java.io.FileInputStream;

• import java.io.FileOutputStream;

• import java.io.IOException;

• public class CopyBytes {

• public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException { FileInputStream in = null;

• FileOutputStream out = null;

•

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Cont ..• try

• {

• in = new FileInputStream("xanadu.txt");

• out = new FileOutputStream("outagain.txt");

• int c; 

• while ((c = in.read()) != -1)

• { out.write(c);

• }

• }

• Finally

• {

• if (in != null) {

• in.close();}

• if (out != null) {

• out.close();

• } } } }

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CopyBytes spends most of its time in a simple loop

that reads the input stream and writes the output stream, one byte at a time, as shown in the following figure.

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Note

• Notice that read() returns an int value. If the input is a stream of bytes, why doesn't read() return a byte value? Using a int as a return type allows read() to use -1 to indicate that it has reached the end of the stream.

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But That’s Not All!

• Input/OutputStream and sub-classes were part of Java 1.1. • Java 1.2 adds more classes specialised for character based

I/O– The stream classes are for data I/O.

• Classes for character I/O are called Readers and Writers• Why have specialised classes?

– To support foreign languages

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Unicode

• Each character in the ASCII character set fits into a single byte– …but that’s not enough for chinese, and other complex

alphabets– Need more than a single byte– A Java character (char) is 2 bytes

• Java handles text using Unicode– International standard character set, containing

characters for almost all known languages

• Inside the JVM all text is held as Unicode

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Java Text I/O

• Because byte != character for all languages, you have to turn bytes into chars using a Input/OutputStream

• Java provides Readers and Writers to save you this work.

• These classes deal with streams of characters– Read/write single character or array of characters

– Again there are classes specialised for particular purposes

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Character Streams

• The Java platform stores character values using Unicode conventions. Character stream I/O automatically translates this internal format to and from the local character set. In Western locales, the local character set is usually an 8-bit superset of ASCII.

• For most applications, I/O with character streams is no more complicated than I/O with byte streams. Input and output done with stream classes automatically translates to and from the local character set. A program that uses character streams in place of byte streams automatically adapts to the local character set and is ready for internationalization — all without extra effort by the programmer.

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Java I/O – Reader

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Java I/O – Readers

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Using Readers

Reader in = null;try{ Reader inner = new FileReader(“c:\\temp\\myfile.txt”); in = new BufferedReader(inner); //process file} catch (IOException e){ e.printStackTrace();}finally{ try { in.close(); } catch (Exception e) {}}

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Java I/O – Writer

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Java I/O – Writers

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Using Writers

Writer out = null;try{ Writer inner = new FileWriter(“c:\\temp\\myfile.txt”); out = new BufferedWriter(inner); //write data to the file} catch (IOException e){ e.printStackTrace();}finally{ try { out.close(); } catch (Exception e) {}}

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Using Character Streams

• import java.io.FileReader;

• import java.io.FileWriter;

• import java.io.IOException;

• public class CopyCharacters {

• public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException { FileReader in = null;

• FileWriter out = null; 

• try

• {

• in = new FileReader("xanadu.txt");

• out = new FileWriter("characteroutput.txt"); 

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Cont ..

• int c;

• while ((c = in.read()) != -1)

• {

• out.write(c);

• }

• }

• finally

• {

• if (in != null)

• { in.close();

• }

• if (out != null)

• { out.close();

• } } }} 36

CopyBytes VS CopyCharacters

• CopyCharacters is very similar to CopyBytes. The most important difference is that CopyCharacters uses FileReader and FileWriter for input and output in place of FileInputStream and FileOutputStream. Notice that both CopyBytes and CopyCharacters use an int variable to read to and write from. However, in CopyCharacters, the int variable holds a character value in its last 16 bits; in CopyBytes, the int variable holds a byte value in its last 8 bits.

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Bridging the Gap

• Sometimes you need to bridge across the two hierachies– Use InputStreamReader or OutputStreamWriter

• InputStreamReader– Reads bytes from an InputStream, and turns them into characters

using a character encoding

• OutputStreamWriter– Turns characters sent to the Writer into bytes written by the

OutputStream, again using a character encoding.

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Questions ???!!

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I hope this was entertaining .

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