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Byte Streams Character Streams June 23, 2005

Posted by javafoo in Java IO, javanotes.
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I can’t believe how people have programmed in Java, myself included, without really understanding how Byte Streams are different from Character Streams. There is an excellent article here
Some pointers:

  • If you see Reader or Writer think character stream and if you see InputStream and OutputStream think bytes.
  • Thumb rule: use byte stream for binary data and character stream for everything else.