InputStream vs InputStreamReader

Question

What\'s the benefit of using InputStream over InputStreamReader, or vice versa.

Here is an example of InputStream in action:

Answer 1

If you want to read binary data use InputStream.

If you want to read strings from a binary stream, use InputStreamReader. One of its constructors allows you to specify a character set.

For this reason do not use FileReader as it uses a platform default for a character set, which is, in many cases, not practical.