Question

A character stream device transfers :

a) Bytes one by one
b) Block of bytes as a unit
c) With unpredictable response times
d) None of these

Answer 1

option a,A character stream device transfers bytes one by one, dealing with data in a character-wise fashion, beneficial for text processing.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question is asking about the mode of data transfer used by a character stream device. The correct answer is a) Bytes one by one. Character stream devices work by transferring data one character at a time, where each character is typically one byte long. This is in contrast to block-based devices, which transfer data in larger, multi-byte blocks. Character streams are often used in situations where text data needs to be processed in a portable and predictable manner, ensuring compatibility between different systems that might interpret text encodings differently.

Example of a character stream device include text files being read or written by a program. Each letter, number, or punctuation mark is handled individually. This contrasts with block devices, such as hard drives or network sockets, which may read or write large blocks of bytes, regardless of the content, be it text or binary data.