Difference between Reader/Writer and InputStream/Output Stream?

what i understand is as follows:
the Reader/Writer is character oriented.But InputStream/Output Stream is byte oriented.
But still can anybody explain what does it actually mean?
Thanks in Advance..

Hi,
The Reader/Writer class hierarchy is character-oriented, and the Input Stream/Output Stream class hierarchy is byte-oriented.
Basically there are two types of streams.Byte streams that are used to handle stream of bytes and character streams for handling streams of characters.In byte streams input/output streams are the abstract classes at the top of hierarchy,while writer/reader are abstract classes at the top of character streams hierarchy.
Hope this answers your question somehow.

thanks for your inputs

There are differrences in the way the information is actually stored. The following link contains an explanation
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/io/charstreams.html

read the paragraph just below the first example, in the section on Using Character Streams.