I have the following test program that is writing out a Person record's field values using java.io.DataOutputStream and it writes them out just fine. Then, after a pause that I put in to check the data file, it is supposed to read in the same three records using java.io.DataInputStream, but it reads in the first record, the Person.id of the second record and throws the EOFException, but is not at the end of file. Here's the code:

public class BinaryFileAccessTest {

    private static File dataFile = new File(System.getProperty("user.home")   File.separator   "dataFile.dat");
    
    /**
     * @param args the command line arguments
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Person> people = new ArrayList<>();
        
        people.add(new Person("Dough", "John", new Date(70, 03, 17), 23500.00d));
        people.add(new Person("Smith", "Sean", new Date(70, 05, 06), 53900.00d));
        people.add(new Person("Carrick", "Rebecca", new Date(59, 06, 13), 20000.00d));
        
        System.out.println("From List<Person> people:");
        for (Person p : people) {
            System.out.println("\tCreated: "   p.toString());
        }
        
        try (DataOutputStream out = new DataOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(dataFile))) {
            System.out.println("Writing Person to file:");
            for (Person p : people) {
                out.writeLong(p.getId());
                out.writeUTF(p.getLastName());
                out.writeUTF(p.getFirstName());
                out.write(p.getBirthDate().toString().getBytes());
                out.writeDouble(p.getSalary());
                
                System.out.println("\tWrote: "   p.toString());
            }
        } catch (IOException ex) {
            System.err.println("An error occurred writing to "   dataFile);
            System.err.println(ex);
            ex.printStackTrace(System.err);
        }
        
        Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);
        boolean exit = false;
        while (!exit) {
            String input = keyboard.nextLine();
            if (input != null) {
                exit = true;
            }
        }
        
        try (DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream(new FileInputStream(dataFile))) {
            people.clear();
            System.out.println("Reading Person from file:");
            
            while (true) {
                Person p = new Person();
                p.setId(in.readLong());
                p.setLastName(in.readUTF());
                p.setFirstName(in.readUTF());
                p.setBirthDate(new Date(in.read()));
                p.setSalary(in.readDouble());
                
                System.out.println("\tRead: "   p.toString());
                people.add(p);
            }
        } catch (IOException ex) {
//            if (!(ex instanceof EOFException)) {
                System.err.println("An error occurred writing to "   dataFile);
                System.err.println(ex);
                ex.printStackTrace(System.err);
//            } else {
//                System.out.println("End of file reached.");
//            }
        }
        
        System.out.println("From List<Person> people:");
        for (Person p : people) {
            System.out.println("\tContains: "   p.toString());
        }
       
    }

}

The output from this program is:

From List<Person> people:
    Created: Dough, John [birth=Fri Apr 17 00:00:00 CST 1970; salary=23500.0
    Created: Smith, Sean [birth=Sat Jun 06 00:00:00 CDT 1970; salary=53900.0
    Created: Carrick, Rebecca [birth=Mon Jul 13 00:00:00 CDT 1959; salary=20000.0
Writing Person to file:
    Wrote: Dough, John [birth=Fri Apr 17 00:00:00 CST 1970; salary=23500.0
    Wrote: Smith, Sean [birth=Sat Jun 06 00:00:00 CDT 1970; salary=53900.0
    Wrote: Carrick, Rebecca [birth=Mon Jul 13 00:00:00 CDT 1959; salary=20000.0

Reading Person from file:
    Read: Dough, John [birth=Wed Dec 31 18:00:00 CST 1969; salary=1.3403241663660614E243

In the second try...catch block, the first record (for John Dough) is read in and stored in the people list just fine. On the second iteration of the while loop, it reads in the ID value for Sean Smith, then when reading in the last name, it throws the EOFException, even though it is not at the end of the file. When I look at the contents of the file during the program execution pause, it has three blocks of data, which are clearly visible: