Boone #38; File I/O

Hi I have been a keen follower of your site but I did not participate till now, so here goes:
Question 38: What does the following code do?
<Code>
File f = new File("hello.test");
FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(f);
</Code>
Select the one right answer.

a)Create a new file named "hello.test" if it does not yet exist. It also opens the file so you can write to it and read from it.
b)Create a new file named "hello.test" if it does not yet exist. The file is not opened.
c)Open a file named "hello.test" so that you can write to it and read from it, but does not create the file if it does not yet exist.
d)Open a file named "hello.test" so that you can write to it but cannot read from it.
e)Create an object that you can now use to create and open the file named "hello.test," and write to and read from the file.
Answer was:
Question 38: a. The first line creates a File object that represents the file. By creating a FileOutputStream, you create the file if it does not yet exist, and open that file for reading and writing. (See chapter 11.)
There are no methods in the FileOutputStream class to read from a file. Doesn't it open a file just to write and not to read? If it opens for a read, how do you read the contents of the file.

File f = new File("hello.test");
FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(f);
These 2 statements together opens/creates if it does not exists a phycical file called "hello.test" in the current dir where the java program is executed.
If the file already exists means, It keeps the file pointer at the start of the file and overwrites the original content of the file. If you want to append to an already existing file you have to use this type of constructor. new FileOutputStream (String filename, boolean append) and the append has to be true.
FileOutputStream is connected to a sink of bytes. It is used to write to the sink. It is not possible to read from it.
So the closest answer I fins is d). Eventhough it does not say anythig about the creation part, what it says is true.
regds
maha anna

Yes I noticed that too when I was practicing. The error is not corrected in the errata so I suggest you chuck it up as a BAD question.
The file is opened for writing.

Yup - only D is correct. So, I'm moving this to "Mock Exam Errata" since it's exactly what we want there.

Thanks "Howard"!

Thanks a lot to all of you. I originally answered as d) but did not find must supporting documentation in the JLS so I was sort of stumped. Can anybody tell where the Java.lang.I/O are better explained?

The biggest and best source of info for this sort of thing is the Java API, which describes all the classes and methods in the standard libraries, including of course all the java.io package. Between that and the JLS (and the JVM spec, which few actually read), these are the documents that pretty much completely define what Java is and how it's supposed to behave.
Of course, if you want a summary, there are many places to get one. Perhaps the standard free source is Sun's Java tutorial - specifically, you'll want to check out the IO tutorial.