The Java IO API provides two kinds of interfaces for reading files, streams and readers. The streams are used to read binary data and readers to read character data. Since a Text File is full of characters, you should be using a Reader implementations to read it. There are several ways to read a plain text file in Java e.g. you can use FileReader, BufferedReader or Scanner to read a text file. Every utility provides something special e.g. BufferedReader provides buffering of data for fast reading, and Scanner provides parsing ability. You can also use both BufferedReader and Scanner to read a text file line by line in Java. Then Java SE 8 introduces another Stream class java.util.stream.Stream which provides a lazy and more efficient way to read a file.