24.22 java.io.FileWriter (JDK 1.1)

FileWriter is a convenience subclass of OutputStreamWriter that is useful when you want to write text (as opposed to binary data) to a file. You create a FileWriter by specifying the file to be written to, and optionally specifying whether the data should be appended to the end of an existing file instead of overwriting that file.

The FileWriter class creates an internal FileOutputStream to write bytes to the specified file, and uses the functionality of its superclass, OutputStreamWriter, to convert the Unicode characters written to the stream characters into bytes using the default encoding of the default locale. (If you want to use an encoding other than the default, you cannot use FileWriter; in that case you must create your own OutputStreamWriter and FileOutputStream.)

Because FileWriter is a trivial subclass of OutputStreamWriter, it does not define any methods of its own, but simply inherits them from its superclass.

public class FileWriter extends OutputStreamWriter {
    // Public Constructors
            public FileWriter(String fileName) throws IOException;
            public FileWriter(String fileName, boolean append) throws IOException;
            public FileWriter(File file) throws IOException;
            public FileWriter(FileDescriptor fd);
}

Hierarchy:

Object->Writer->OutputStreamWriter->FileWriter