Difference between Character Stream and Byte Stream in Java

In Java the streams are used for input and output operations by allowing data to be read from or written to a source or destination.

Java offers two types of streams:

1. character streams
2. byte streams.

These streams can be different in how they are handling data and the type of data they are handling.

1. Character Streams:

Character streams are designed to address character based records, which includes textual records inclusive of letters, digits, symbols, and other characters. These streams are represented by way of training that quit with the phrase "Reader" or "Writer" of their names, inclusive of FileReader, BufferedReader, FileWriter, and BufferedWriter.

Character streams offer a convenient manner to read and write textual content-primarily based information due to the fact they mechanically manage character encoding and decoding. They convert the individual statistics to and from the underlying byte circulation the usage of a particular individual encoding, such as UTF-eight or ASCII.It makes person streams suitable for operating with textual content files, analyzing and writing strings, and processing human-readable statistics.

2. Byte Streams:

Byte streams are designed to deal with raw binary data, which includes all kinds of data, including characters, pictues, audio, and video. These streams are represented through cclasses that cease with the word "InputStream" or "OutputStream" of their names,along with FileInputStream,BufferedInputStream, FileOutputStream and BufferedOutputStream.

Byte streams offer a low-stage interface for studying and writing character bytes or blocks of bytes. They are normally used for coping with non-textual statistics, studying and writing files of their binary form, and running with network sockets. Byte streams don't perform any individual encoding or deciphering. They treat the data as a sequence of bytes and don't interpret it as characters.

Here are the some of the differences listed:

Example code for Character Stream:

FileName: CharacterStreamExample.java

Output:

The characters read from the reader:H,e,l,l,o,

Example code for Byte Stream:

FileName: ByteStreamExample.java

Output:

The bytes read from the input stream:10,20,30,40.