Input and output streams let REXX communicate with external objects--people, files, queues, serial interfaces, displays, networks, and the like. In programming there are many useful stream actions that could be coded as methods for manipulating the various stream objects. These methods and objects are organized in the Stream class.
The methods are used to open streams for reading or writing, close streams at the end of an operation, move the line-read or line-write position within, say, a file stream, or get information about a stream. Methods are also provided to get character strings from a stream or send them to a stream, count characters in a stream, flush buffered data to a stream, query path specifications, time stamps, size, and other information from a stream, or do any other I/O stream manipulation one might find necessary or useful (see Input and Output for examples).