Binary File

Of course, fundamentally all files consist of 8-bit bytes. As far as the computer's electronics is concerned all files look alike. Those files that contain bytes that are intended to be interpreted as characters are called text files, and those that contain bytes that are intended for other interpretations are called binary files.

The terms "text file" and "binary file" are somewhat misleading. Many of the bytes in a word processor file are interpreted as font, formatting, graphics, and other non-character information, so it is a binary file. It could not correctly be read with a Reader stream.

The picture shows the top of the IO stream hierarchy: This chapter will look at the OutputStream class.