Reads a stream as ASCII characters, providing full conversion from native operating system format to Unicode.Higher level classes also support buffering and more efficient management of text files (ie: management of cr/lf).
Reads a stream as ASCII bytes, recognizing only 7-bit characters (the first 128).
A buffered stream optimizes read/write to a disk file. Non-buffered streams will write immediately to disk. Buffered streams will store the information in a memory buffer. When the buffer is full, the contents are written to disk, then the buffer is cleared.
Streams limit you to working with the input and/or output aspects of a file. The File object provides higher level manipulation, including (but not limited to):
- directories
- paths
- attributes
- size
- deleting