CHAPTER 86 — Reading Binary Files

Recall that binary files are those whose bytes might hold any possible pattern. Binary files store data that has not been translated into character form. Of course, a binary file can store character data mixed in with its other data types. A file that exclusively stores character data is called a text file.

The subclasses of InputStream are designed for byte-oriented input from any source. Many types of data sources of data can serve as an InputStream. However, in this chapter, the source will be a file on the hard disk.

Chapter Topics:

• Reading binary files.
• Advantages of binary files.
• DataInputSteam
• FileInputSteam
• BufferedInputSteam
• Reading and writing integers.
• Reading and writing single bytes.