Stream and file handling - C++ [1/1]

The C file system is designed to work with a wide variety of devices, including terminals, disk drives and tape drives. Even though each device is very different, the C file system transforms each into a logical device called a stream. There are two types of streams text and binary. A Text stream is a sequence of characters. A binary stream is a sequence of bytes with a one-to-one correspondence to those in the external device. It acts either as a source from which the input data can be obtained or a destination to which the output data can be sent. The concept is illustrated in the figure.