{"id":338,"date":"2021-09-02T16:11:41","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T20:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/?p=338"},"modified":"2021-10-13T22:40:28","modified_gmt":"2021-10-14T02:40:28","slug":"byte-stream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/byte-stream-411116\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s A Byte Stream, Anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Byte streams are a sequence of bytes used by programs to input and output information. The terms\u00a0byte stream<\/em> and octet-stream<\/i> are both used somewhat synonymously, though octet streams are common among networking terminology.<\/p>\n

As one tries to wrap their head around byte streams, the first question is often what’s a byte? <\/em>A byte is simply a series of 8-bits (1 or 0 values.) The separating factor between a bit stream and byte stream is the decision to interpret the stream in 8-part groups rather than single discrete units.<\/p>\n

Bits vs. Bytes<\/h2>\n

Essentially, a bitstream<\/em> becomes a byte stream<\/i> when it’s interpreted as a series of 8-bit sequences rather than a sequence of 1’s and 0’s. If one is in a more formal mood, it can be called an octet-stream<\/i>. It’s still a bunch of 1’s and 0’s but with the implication that one should interpret the data as an array of 8-bit values.<\/p>\n

\"bit
This byte example illustrates an 8-bit series of values that could represent any number of things<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Can a byte be considered a\u00a0bitstream<\/em>? I suppose, technically. The qualifier stream<\/em> is generally reserved in describing data large enough to exceed common unit notation.<\/p>\n

Byte Stream<\/h2>\n

In the above example, the data can be interpreted as simple 1’s and 0’s amounting to the binary value of 102. However, if this were taken as a smaller segment within an indeterminately-long bitstream<\/em>\u2014even that interpretation wouldn’t be possible.<\/p>\n

If one chooses to interpret the data as a series of 8-bit bytes<\/em>, many more interpretations based on this minimal structuring are possible. For example, a byte stream could be interpreted in ASCII such that the above value would represent the lowercase character f<\/code>. Below, is an illustration of how a byte stream representing textual data might appear.<\/p>\n

\"byte
This illustration depicts a 4-byte stream representing the word “code”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Note<\/strong>: In the illustration above, the solid black boxes separating 8-bit groups are purely for visualization purposes only. Such a gap in information would not be present in practice.<\/p>\n

Byte Stream Example in Java<\/h2>\n

Java is one of the most utilized programming languages in the world and, as one might expect, has great affordance for working with byte streams. Java provides a high-level API for streaming bytes between data sources. Below, see an example of using Java’s FileInputStream<\/code> and FileOutputStream<\/code> classes to copy the contents of input.txt<\/code> to output.txt<\/code>:<\/p>\n

\/\/ Define I\/O streams\r\nFileInputStream inStream;\r\nFileOutputStream outStream;\r\n\r\n\/\/ Get input stream\r\ninStream = new FileInputStream(\"input.txt\");\r\n\r\n\/\/ Get output Stream\r\noutStream = new FileOutputStream(\"output.txt\");\r\n\r\n\/\/ Stream input, write to output\r\nint next;  \/\/ the next character in the byte stream\r\nwhile((next = inStream.read()) != -1){\r\n\r\n    \/\/ Write next character\r\n    outStream.write(next);\r\n}<\/pre>\n
In the code above, a file named input.txt<\/code> is opened and read byte by byte and written to a file object (via byte stream) until the value -1<\/code> is reached (java for no more bytes<\/em>). The end result being that input.txt<\/code> is copied to output.txt<\/code>. The approach above is subject to IOExceptions and should be handled appropriately.<\/p>\n
Note<\/strong>: Byte streams should always be closed after use to ensure no memory leaks. A more complete version of the above code, demonstrating proper close()<\/code> method calls, can be found on GitHub.<\/a><\/p>\n
Byte streams are used when the nature of data isn’t certain. In cases where textual data is being streamed, languages like Java offer character-streaming classes<\/a>. These constructs can be useful in network programming where users input character-based data that is then sent over the network, which is transmitted as bits.<\/p>\n
Discussion<\/h2>\n
There is much to consider when it comes to bits, bytes, and the streaming of either. Modern network communications<\/a> rely heavily on protocols<\/a> largely concerned with the transmission of bits.<\/p>\n
In fact, network communications are so<\/em> bitstream oriented that line “speeds” are measured in\u00a0bitrate<\/em> commonly denoted as Megabits per second<\/em> (Mbps).<\/p>\n
The examples here are as basic as it gets\u2014meant only to be an introduction to the topic of bits, bytes, and byte streams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Byte streams are a sequence of bytes used by programs to input and output information. The terms\u00a0byte stream and octet-stream are both used somewhat synonymously, though octet streams are common among networking terminology. As one tries to wrap their head around byte streams, the first question is often what’s a byte? A byte is simply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[162,163,161],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":343,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions\/343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}