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Index › Programming Questions & Help › Programs › copying a file

powerpants YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 3

copying a file Feb 9th, 2010, 9:46pm   Ok, basic programming question here... I'm just trying to open a .wav file and copy it byte by byte.  Why does this result in a gibberish file that is much bigger than my original? Code: // open a file and read its binary data byte b[] = loadBytes("test.wav"); PrintWriter output; output = createWriter("copy.wav"); //Print the whole thing to a file, a byte at a time for (int i = 0; i < b.length; i++) {    output.print(b[i]);    } //Close everything and quit output.flush(); output.close(); exit(); Thanks......

subpixel Senior Member Offline Posts: 261	Re: copying a file Reply #1 - Feb 10th, 2010, 12:35am   Think about this... In the ASCII character table (decimal) 72 is the letter 'H', and (decimal) 105 is the letter 'i'. What happens when you do this? Code: print(72); print(105); You should get something "72105", not "Hi". Does your "gibberish file" consist of a stream of numbers? -spxl
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subpixel Senior Member Offline Posts: 261	Re: copying a file Reply #2 - Feb 10th, 2010, 12:54am   See saveBytes() in the Processing reference for the 'opposite' of loadBytes(). saveStream() "is basically saveBytes(blah, loadBytes()), but done more efficiently (and with less confusing syntax)." If you just want to copy the file, this is probably what you want to use. -spxl
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PhiLho  YaBB Moderator Offline Posts: 4190 Near Paris (France)

Re: copying a file Reply #3 - Feb 10th, 2010, 5:17am   Choose the right tools (which isn't easy in Java, as the numerous I/O classes are confusing!). PrintWriter description excerpt: "Prints formatted representations of objects to a text-output stream. This class implements all of the print methods found in PrintStream. It does not contain methods for writing raw bytes, for which a program should use unencoded byte streams. " [EDIT] I realize you probably only saw Reference's PrintWriter, but it also states text-output stream...