Difference between Reader/Writer and InputStream/Output Stream?

[santu das]

what i understand is as follows:
the Reader/Writer is character oriented.But InputStream/Output Stream is byte oriented.
But still can anybody explain what does it actually mean?
Thanks in Advance..

[eshu khare]

Hi,
The Reader/Writer class hierarchy is character-oriented, and the Input Stream/Output Stream class hierarchy is byte-oriented.
Basically there are two types of streams.Byte streams that are used to handle stream of bytes and character streams for handling streams of characters.In byte streams input/output streams are the abstract classes at the top of hierarchy,while writer/reader are abstract classes at the top of character streams hierarchy.
Hope this answers your question somehow.

[santu das]

thanks for your inputs

[Fred Hamilton]

There are differrences in the way the information is actually stored. The following link contains an explanation
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/io/charstreams.html

read the paragraph just below the first example, in the section on Using Character Streams.