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| Chapter 24 The java.io Package |

## 24.22 java.io.FileWriter (JDK 1.1)

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`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

java.io.FileReader (JDK 1.1) |  | java.io.FilenameFilter (JDK 1.0)