COMP1681 / SE15

Today’s Learning Objectives

Introduction
 To become familiar with the concept of an I/O stream.
to Programming  Understand the difference between binary and text files.
 Learn how to save data in a file.
 Learn how to read data from a file.
Lecture 33
Streams and File I/O

SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–2

Lecture Outline What is a Stream?

 A stream is a flow of data
 Overview of Streams and File I/O  characters, numbers or bytes of binary digits
 Text file Output
 Text File Input  Input Stream – data flows into your program (files,
keyboard)
 Output Stream data flows out (Screen, files)
Savitch Chapter 9
 Java implements streams as objects of stream classes

 Examples we have seen so far?

SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–3 SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–4

Text files vs Binary files Text File I/O

 All data in any file are stored as binary digits (0’s & 1’s)
 3 steps are required
 Text files  1. Open a file (connects a file to a stream)
 Can think of a file's contents as consisting of a sequence of
characters.
 2. Write to the file
 Java streams provide methods that make the binary digits look  3. Close the file
like characters to your program or editor.
 Usually appear the same on all computers, because they use
common standards (such as ASCII or Unicode)  Classes we shall look at:
 Human readable.
 PrintWriter class
 Binary files
 BufferedReader class
 Contents are handled as a sequences of binary digits.  File class
 More efficient.
 Implementation differs between computers.

SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–5 SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–6
Opening a text file for writing with
PrintWriter FileNotFoundException
 First declare a variable of type PrintWriter e.g..  When you open a file for writing the constructor might throw an exception
PrintWriter outputStream = null; FileNotFoundException
 It means the file could not be created, such as when the filename was
(this is the name of the stream) already in use for a directory name
 You should therefore catch the exception in a catch block or throw it
 Next construct the outputStream object by calling the constructor for PrintWriter outputStream = null;
the PrintWriter class try
 The PrintWriter class has no constructor that takes a file {
name as its argument so we use the class FileOutputStream to outputStream = new PrintWriter(new
create a stream that can be used as an argument to the FileOutputStream(“out.txt”));
PrintWriter constructor e.g. }
new FileOutputStream(“out.txt”) catch(FileNotFoundException e)
{
 outputStream = new PrintWriter( System.out.println(“Error openning file”);
System.exit(0);
new FileOutputStream(“out.txt”));
}

SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–7 SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–8

Writing to a text file with

PrintWriter Closing a file with PrintWriter
 When your program has finished writing to a file, it
 PrintWriter has a method println that behaves like should close the stream connected to the file.
the System.out.println method but the output goes outputStream.close();
to a text file
 outputStream.println(“this line will be  Why bother closing a file?
written to a file”);  Java will close any open files for you if your program
terminates normally.
 System.out.println(“this line will be  If an error occurs the files may not be closed and the files
displayed on the screen”); can be damaged.
 If you open a file for writing you must close it before it can
be read.
SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–9 SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–10

Opening a text file for input with

Overwriting and appending files BufferedReader
 Connecting to a stream using a) declare a stream variable e.g.
outputStream = new PrintWriter(new BufferedReader inputStream = null;
FileOutputStream(“out.txt”));
Will always produce an empty file even if a file of that b) construct the stream object
name already exists!! As with PrintWriter there is no constructor that takes a
file name as an argument therefore we need another class
FileReader to help with opening the file.
 If you wish to add data to a file (appending a file) you
must use inputStream = new BufferedReader( new
 outputStream = new PrintWriter(new FileReader(“data.txt”));
FileOutputStream(“out.txt”,true));
You should also catch the FileNotFoundException.
SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–11 SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–12
Reading data from the file with
BufferedReader Using path names
 The method readLine reads from a text file just as the nextLine  A typical UNIX path name is
method of the class Scanner reads a line of text from the
keyboard. /user/smith/homework1/data.txt
String line = inputStream.readLine();  To create a FileReader for this file you use
new FileReader(“/user/smith/homework1/data.txt”)
 It does not have methods such as nextInt and nextDouble.

 readLine may throw an IOException

 Windows uses \ instead of / in path names

 When readline tries to read beyond the end of the file it returns  A typical Windows path name is
null D:\homework1\data.txt
 When your program has finished reading from the file, it should
 To create a FileReader for this file you use
close the stream connected to the file. new FileReader(“D:\\homework1\\data.txt”);
inputStream.close();
SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–13 SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–14

Summary Follow-up Work

 Looked at the concept of Streams  Savitch Chapter 9
 Learnt how to write text files using the PrintWriter  For next time
class  File class
 Learnt how to read text files using the Buffered Reader  Binary File I/O
class

SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–15 SE15: Streams and File I/O 30–16