The {@code DataInput} interface provides for reading bytes from a binary stream and reconstructing from them data in any of the Java primitive types. There is also a facility for reconstructing a {@code string} from data in <a href="#modified-utf-8">modified UTF-8</a> format. <p> It is generally true of all the reading routines in this interface that if end of file is reached before the desired number of bytes has been read, an {@code EOFException} (which is a kind of {@code IOException}) is thrown. If any byte cannot be read for any reason other than end of file, an {@code IOException} other than {@code EOFException} is thrown. In particular, an {@code IOException} may be thrown if the input stream has been closed.