CMP File I/O Amanuensis 4.6. I/O teaching tool.

The File I/O Amanuensis generates sample Java
source code to read or write the console, a
sequential file, a random access file, a String,
an array of characters, an array of bytes, URL,
HTTP CGI GET/POST, Socket or Pipe.  It shows you
how to read or write ASCII-8 bit characters (plain
or locale-encoded), Unicode 16-bit characters, raw
bytes, big endian binary, little endian binary, or
serialised objects, buffered, unbuffered or gzip
compressed.

The code it generates is a bit odd in that I field
every exception exactly where it occurs, mainly to
document precisely what throws what.  In real life
you would collapse the myriad separate try blocks
into bigger ones.  FileIO runs either as an
application or as an applet that needs to run in
JDK 1.1+ capable browser.  Source code and sample
HTML included.  May be freely distributed and used
for any purpose except military.

It works by asking you 4 multiple choice questions
about what you want to do.  You fill in your
choices in a dialog box at it instantly generates
the corresponding code that you can copy/paste and
modify.


1) What is the type of the source/target?

 - sequential file
 - random access file
 - String (in RAM i/o)
 - char[] (in RAM i/o)
 - byte[] (in RAM i/o)
 - URL    (remote i/o)
 - HTTP CGI
 - socket
 - pipe

2) Do you want to read or write?

3) Which do you want: unbuffered, buffered or
compressed?

4) What is the format of the data being read or
written?

 - raw, untranslated, bulk, 8-bit bytes
 - default-encoded chars (usually 8-bit)
 - locale-encoded chars (usually 8-bit),
   e.g. IBM-OEM Cp437
 - Unicode 16-bit chars
 - big-endian binary (Java standard)
 - little-endian binary (Intel standard)
 - serialised objects

It generates 378 possible different example
programs.

This Applet does not yet give you any help with
the Java 1.4 javax.imageio.ImageIO class or the
java.nio classes: Buffer, ByteBuffer, ByteOrder,
CharBuffer, DoubleBuffer, FloatBuffer, IntBuffer,
LongBuffer, MappedByteBuffer or ShortBuffer.


Version 4.3 notes the missing readLine method in
unbuffered Readers.

Version 4.4 is simplified. It no longer shown the
Exception catching. This makes for more realistic code
that is easier to cut and paste.

Version 4.5 shows you how to do GET/POST and HEAD and
how to turn off keep-alive for more efficient HTTP
transactions.

Version 4.6 adds an about box, version checking, a warning
about read not always giving all you ask for, and
cleaner internals.