Java Exceptions and I/O

1. Find the local documentation for the Java 1.5.0 SDK. Bookmark it. Refer to it often. (The primary source is at Sun http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/)
2. Find the documentation for the Java I/O platform inside the SDK docs. How many top-level interfaces and classes does java.io contain?
3. Create a text file called fred.txt in your file space using an editor (Notepad will do). Enter a few lines of text and save the file. Now write a Java program that uses the File class to create a new file instance using the path name of your file. Check whether your application can read the file (what is the obvious method to use for this?).
4. Use the File class to: 1) create a directory in your file space; 2) print to the console a list of files and directories contained in a directory that exists in your file space; 3) prints a list similar to the previous one but including only the names of directories.
5. Open fred.txt as a FileInputStream. How can you do this 1) using a File object; 2) using a string containing the file name. Implement both approaches. Read the contents of fred.txt and print them to the console.
6. Repeat the previous exercise but open the file as a FileReader. What is the difference in these approaches?
7. Open a DataOutputStream to a new file called numbers.bin. Output the integers from 100 to 280 to the file. Close the file. Open the file as a DataInputStream. Read the file and display the integers on the console.
8. Use a GZIP filter stream to compress numbers.bin and write the output to a new file numbers.bin.gz. What percentage reduction in file size is achieved? Make sure that you can decompress and read numbers.bin.gz.