CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javafilestream
birraa
birraa

Reputation: 440

Confusion on byte streams

While reading a Java book on byte streams, I came across this example which the book uses to show the difference between the two. The example used is the number 199. According to the book, if this number is written to character stream, then it is written as three different characters: 0x31 0xC7 0x39. But if this is written to byte stream, it is written as single value 0xC7. My doubt is, 199 does not fit into a byte in Java. So, shouldn't it be written as two bytes instead of one? Is 199 written as 1 byte or two bytes in binary streams?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 111

Answers (1)

khelwood
khelwood

Reputation: 59146

If you call OutputStream.write(int), which is a method for writing a single byte, it will ignore all the bits except the bottom eight. That means that 199 and -57 would be written exactly the same way. For that particular method, that's the way it works because it is only supposed to write a byte.

If you called some other method, it will work differently. For instance, DataOutputStream.writeInt writes an integer as four bytes, because that's what that method is for.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions