PrintWriter vs FileWriter in Java

FileWriter and PrintWriter are the character representation of IO. That means it can be used to write characters. Internally FileWriter would use the default character set of the underlying OS and convert the characters to bytes and write it to the disk.

PrintWriter & FileWriter .
Similarities
a) Both extend from Writer.
b) Both are character representation classes, that means they work with characters and convert them to bytes using default charset.
Differences
a) FileWriter throws IOException in case of any IO failure, this is a checked exception.
b) None of the PrintWriter methods throws IOException , instead they set a boolean flag which can be obtained using checkError().
c) PrintWrite r invokes flush after every byte of data is written , automatically. In case of FileWriter , invoker as to take care of invoking flush.

Difference between PrintStream and OutputStream : Similar to above explanation, just replace character with byte.

Method of PrintWriter class:

a)PrintWriter(Writer out);

b)PrintWriter(Writer out,boolean autoFlush);//if autoFlush is true,then method println will flush the buffer;

c)PrintWriter(OutputStream out);

d)PrintWriter(OutputStream out,boolean autoFlush);

e)PrintWriter(String filename);

f)PrintWriter(File file);     //the same effective as Print(Writer filename);

g)print();

h)println();  //after print,add a line break in this line.("\r\n" for Windows and "\n" for Linux);

i) checkError();

 

Method of FileWriter class:

a)close();

b)flush();

c)write();

d)FileWriter(String fileName);

e)FileWriter(File file, boolean append);   //if argument "append" is true,then bytes will be written to the end of the file rather than the beginning

f)FileWriter(File file);

g)FileWriter(File file,boolean append);

h)FileWriter(FileDescriptor fd);

 

 

associate:

FileWriter out = new FileWriter("test.txt");

equals：

PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter("test.txt"));