Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition [Electronic resources]

This class is a subclass of InputStream that reads bytes from a file specified by name or by a File or FileDescriptor object. read( ) reads a byte or array of bytes from the file. It returns -1 when the end-of-file has been reached. To read binary data, you typically use this class in conjunction with a BufferedInputStream and DataInputStream. To read text, you typically use it with an InputStreamReader and BufferedReader. Call close( ) to close the file when input is no longer needed.

In Java 1.4 and later, use getChannel( ) to obtain a FileChannel object for reading from the underlying file using the New I/O API of java.nio and its subpackages.

public class 
FileInputStream  extends InputStream {
// Public Constructors
public 
FileInputStream (String 
name ) throws FileNotFoundException;  
public 
FileInputStream (File 
file ) throws FileNotFoundException;  
public 
FileInputStream (FileDescriptor 
fdObj );  
// Public Instance Methods
1.4   public java.nio.channels.FileChannel 
getChannel ( );  
public final FileDescriptor 
getFD ( ) throws IOException;  
// Public Methods Overriding InputStream
public int 
available ( ) throws IOException;                          native
public void 
close ( ) throws IOException;  
public int 
read ( ) throws IOException;                               native
public int 
read (byte[ ] 
b ) throws IOException;  
public int 
read (byte[ ] 
b , int 
off , int 
len ) throws IOException;  
public long 
skip (long 
n ) throws IOException;                       native
// Protected Methods Overriding Object
protected void 
finalize ( ) throws IOException;  
}