Why cant a RandomAccessFile be casted to Inputstream?

Question

I get compilation error when I do this cast:

RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile(...)
InputStream is = (InputStream)raf;

Rand

Answer 1

To build on @robert-christian’s answer, the main reason to use RandomAccessFile to begin with is to seek to some position, rather than skipping bytes from a FileInputStream. But then why bother with pre-NIO APIs at all?

try (FileChannel ch = FileChannel.open(Paths.get(…), StandardOpenOption.READ)) {
    InputStream is = Channels.newInputStream(ch.position(…));
    // …
}