Reading textual data - Archive of obsolete content
reading lines the nsiunicharlineinputstream interface provides an easy way to read entire lines from a unichar stream.
...using utf-8 for this example: */ "utf-8"; var is = components.classes["@mozilla.org/intl/converter-input-stream;1"] .createinstance(components.interfaces.nsiconverterinputstream); // this assumes that fis is the nsiinputstream you want to read from is.init(fis, charset, 1024, 0xfffd); is.queryinterface(components.interfaces.nsiunicharlineinputstream); if (is instanceof components.interfaces.nsiunicharlineinputstream) { var line = {}; var cont; do { cont = is.readline(line); // now you can do something with line.value } while (cont); } the above example reads an entire stream until eof.

XPCOM Stream Guide
(xxx nsiunicharinputstream interface) (xxx nsiunicharlineinputstream interface) (xxx nsisearchableinputstream interface) stream converters (tbd: @mozilla.org/streamconverters;1) forcing an input stream to be read suppose you already have an input stream, and something to read from that input stream...but the reader doesn't do anything with the stream.