The InputStream Class

java.io.InputStream is an abstract class that contains the basic methods for reading raw bytes of data from a stream. Although InputStream is an abstract class many methods in the class library are only specified to return an InputStream, so you'll often have to deal directly with only the methods declared in this class.

 public abstract int read() throws IOException
 public int read(byte[] data) throws IOException
 public int read(byte[] data, int offset, int length) throws IOException
 public long skip(long n) throws IOException
 public int available() throws IOException
 public void close() throws IOException
 public synchronized void mark(int readlimit)
 public synchronized void reset() throws IOException
 public boolean markSupported()

Notice that almost all these methods can throw an IOException. This is true of pretty much anything to do with input and output. The only exception is the PrintStream class which eats all exceptions.

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Last Modified November 19, 1999
Copyright 1997, 1999 Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu