Howdy
There are, of course, no IO and AWT objectives on the 1.4 exam. But... some folks have been surprised because you *may* see a question on the exam that USES a java.io class or a java.awt. class (or even the package) as part of the code in a question.
We tried to eliminate all of these, but if you DO see one, don't panic! You can relax and know that the question is NOT testing your knowledge of awt or io, and may simply be checking to see if you understand packages, import statements, and the issue of fully-qualified names. In other words, if you see a question that uses java.awt or java.io, it might as well be using com.foo or any other package, and NO specific knowledge of the packages (or any classes in them) is required for answering that question.
This has caused a lot of confusion because people have come back from the exam and posted, "They said AWT and IO were not on the exam, but they were!!" Usually, those comments were from people who failed the exam anyway, because they didn't have a strong enough grasp of the basics
But as I said, I *think* we eliminated the last of those questions in our most recent edits to the exam.
cheers and good luck,
Kathy
co-developer, SCJP 1.4 exam