Here is a picture of a Java program doing character input and output. In this picture, the white box represents the entire program. The program has imported Scanner for use with input, and has imported System.out for use with output.

To use the methods of a Scanner an object must be constructed. (The diagram shows the object as a rectangle.)

The nextLine() method of Scanner reads one line of character data from the keyboard. The characters go into a String object. An assignment statement puts a reference to the object in the reference variable inData. To output the characters to the monitor, the program uses the println() method of System.out.