Chapter 10
Advanced Input/Output
COMPUTER PROGRAMS ARE ONLY USEFUL if they interact with
the rest of the world in some way. This interaction is referred to as input/output,
or I/O. Up until now, the only type of interaction that has been covered in this
textbook is interaction with the user, through either a graphical user interface
or a command-line interface. But the user is only one possible source of information
and only one possible destination for information. In this chapter, we'll look at
others, including files and network connections. In Java, input/output involving files and
networks is based on streams, which are objects that support the
same sort of I/O commands that you have already used to communicate with the user in a command-line
interface. In fact, standard output (System.out) and standard input (System.in)
are examples of streams.
Working with files and networks requires familiarity with exceptions, which were
introduced in the previous chapter.
Many of the subroutines that are used can throw
exceptions that require mandatory exception handling. This generally means calling the
subroutine in a try...catch statement that can deal with the exception if
one occurs.
Contents of Chapter 10:
