What’s a byte stream?

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A byte stream is a term used to represent a computational technique that allows data to be sent along a particular path. Here, instead of single ones and zeros, known as binary digits or bits, units the size of eight bits, known as bytes, are sent along the path. It is also sometimes referred to as a character stream, since most of the characters that make up a natural language alphabet, numbers, and so on are represented by such 8-bit units. The path, or entities involved in the data transfer, are somewhat abstract, as they can represent a file being accessed by a program, data processed within a program, or data traveling over a network.

For a stream of bytes to be most efficient, it flows through a dedicated and reliable path sometimes referred to as a pipe or pipeline. That path must be reliable to ensure that the output is accurate. In a sense, when considering computer programming, the pipe is the path that connects various aspects of a program so that while data is being processed from the input, it can be passed to another part of the program, to another and so on, until you reach the exit.

Another type of pipeline can be used by some operating systems to take data, such as the contents of a file, and run it through multiple different programs to produce an output. This is useful with text processing applications, made effective through a stream of character bytes to pass data. One of the most common uses of a stream of bytes, then, is for a computer’s operating system when it accesses data in a file.

In early computer networks, some systems distinguished between a byte and what is also called an octet. Since an octet is also a unit of computation made up of eight bits, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, although on those older systems they are not the same thing. As a result, however, octet stream is also a term used when referring to byte stream, although primarily in regards to computer networking. An example, “application/octet-stream”, is the general purpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) type for delivering any type of binary data over a network.

When it comes to sending a stream of bytes over a computer network, you need a reliable two-way transport layer protocol, such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) used on the Internet. These are referred to as a byte stream protocol. Other serial data protocols used with some types of hardware components, such as the UART technique (universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter), is a serial data channel that also uses a stream of bytes for communication. In this case, the byte, or character, is packed into a frame at the transmitting end, where an additional lead bit and some optional control bits are linked and then separated from the frame at the receiving end. This technique is sometimes referred to as a byte-oriented protocol.

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