Java chapters

Chapter 15 of 17

Input, Output and Files

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Talking to the world

A useful program reads input (from the keyboard, a file, a network call, or another program) and produces output (to the screen, a file, or another network call). Java provides simple helpers for the basic cases and powerful libraries for the rest.

import java.util.Scanner;
Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);
String name = sc.nextLine();
System.out.println("Hello, " + name);

Buffering and performance

Reading or writing one byte at a time is usually slow. Java buffers I/O behind the scenes so that small reads and writes are batched into larger ones. When you need maximum performance — large log files, streaming uploads — drop down to the buffered or streaming APIs explicitly.

Closing resources

Files, sockets and database connections must be closed when you are done with them. Forgetting leaks operating-system resources and eventually crashes long-running programs. Use the language's built-in with / using / defer construct (it has a different name in each language) to guarantee cleanup happens.

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