How to piece together String using file reader and char array - java

Wrote a file in another class and now I'm trying to piece together the file into a JLabel, so I need to convert the name in the file into a string. Using FileReader and a char array to separate each character into an array to be put together in the JLabel.
I'm getting this error on NamePieces[x] = (char)nr;:
Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 0
at clients.initialize(clients.java:197)
at clients.<init>(clients.java:72)
This is the code that I want to read the file:
try(FileReader nameReader = new FileReader(NamePath)) {
int nr = nameReader.read();
int x = 0;
while(nr != -1) {
namePieces[x] = (char)nr;
nr = nameReader.read();
x++;
}
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e) {}
catch (IOException e1) {}
String name = String.valueOf(namePieces[0]) + namePieces[1];
Doesn't work

Most likely, your problem occurs because namePieces is not initialized. As was already mentioned in the comments, you should not use char[] as a container for your characters (because in real world you won't know the length of the files' contents every time, so you will probably need to resize your container), it is way more better to use StringBuilder, provided by Java standard library. It will protect you from getting out of bounds.
StringBuilder namePieces = new StringBuilder();
File file = new File(filePath);
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(file),
Charset.forName("UTF-8")));
int c;
while((c = reader.read()) != -1) {
namePieces.append((char) c);
}
String nameString = namePieces.toString(); // Use this string as a complete array of needed characters
As you see I changed an approach by using not only StringBuilder, but also BufferedReader. However, for your task you can leave FileReader as it is. Just consider appending characters to builder.

If your file just contains a String there is a straightforward way to read it:
public String readMyFile( String fileName) throws IOException {
Path path = Paths.get(fileName);
return Files.readAllLines(path).get(0);
}

Related

Reading a specific set of lines in a file [duplicate]

In Java, is there any method to read a particular line from a file? For example, read line 32 or any other line number.
For small files:
String line32 = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("file.txt")).get(32)
For large files:
try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(Paths.get("file.txt"))) {
line32 = lines.skip(31).findFirst().get();
}
Unless you have previous knowledge about the lines in the file, there's no way to directly access the 32nd line without reading the 31 previous lines.
That's true for all languages and all modern file systems.
So effectively you'll simply read lines until you've found the 32nd one.
Not that I know of, but what you could do is loop through the first 31 lines doing nothing using the readline() function of BufferedReader
FileInputStream fs= new FileInputStream("someFile.txt");
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fs));
for(int i = 0; i < 31; ++i)
br.readLine();
String lineIWant = br.readLine();
Joachim is right on, of course, and an alternate implementation to Chris' (for small files only because it loads the entire file) might be to use commons-io from Apache (though arguably you might not want to introduce a new dependency just for this, if you find it useful for other stuff too though, it could make sense).
For example:
String line32 = (String) FileUtils.readLines(file).get(31);
http://commons.apache.org/io/api-release/org/apache/commons/io/FileUtils.html#readLines(java.io.File, java.lang.String)
You may try indexed-file-reader (Apache License 2.0). The class IndexedFileReader has a method called readLines(int from, int to) which returns a SortedMap whose key is the line number and the value is the line that was read.
Example:
File file = new File("src/test/resources/file.txt");
reader = new IndexedFileReader(file);
lines = reader.readLines(6, 10);
assertNotNull("Null result.", lines);
assertEquals("Incorrect length.", 5, lines.size());
assertTrue("Incorrect value.", lines.get(6).startsWith("[6]"));
assertTrue("Incorrect value.", lines.get(7).startsWith("[7]"));
assertTrue("Incorrect value.", lines.get(8).startsWith("[8]"));
assertTrue("Incorrect value.", lines.get(9).startsWith("[9]"));
assertTrue("Incorrect value.", lines.get(10).startsWith("[10]"));
The above example reads a text file composed of 50 lines in the following format:
[1] The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog ODD
[2] The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog EVEN
Disclamer: I wrote this library
Although as said in other answers, it is not possible to get to the exact line without knowing the offset (pointer) before. So, I've achieved this by creating an temporary index file which would store the offset values of every line. If the file is small enough, you could just store the indexes (offset) in memory without needing a separate file for it.
The offsets can be calculated by using the RandomAccessFile
RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile("myFile.txt","r");
//above 'r' means open in read only mode
ArrayList<Integer> arrayList = new ArrayList<Integer>();
String cur_line = "";
while((cur_line=raf.readLine())!=null)
{
arrayList.add(raf.getFilePointer());
}
//Print the 32 line
//Seeks the file to the particular location from where our '32' line starts
raf.seek(raf.seek(arrayList.get(31));
System.out.println(raf.readLine());
raf.close();
Also visit the Java docs on RandomAccessFile for more information:
Complexity: This is O(n) as it reads the entire file once. Please be aware for the memory requirements. If it's too big to be in memory, then make a temporary file that stores the offsets instead of ArrayList as shown above.
Note: If all you want in '32' line, you just have to call the readLine() also available through other classes '32' times. The above approach is useful if you want to get the a specific line (based on line number of course) multiple times.
Another way.
try (BufferedReader reader = Files.newBufferedReader(
Paths.get("file.txt"), StandardCharsets.UTF_8)) {
List<String> line = reader.lines()
.skip(31)
.limit(1)
.collect(Collectors.toList());
line.stream().forEach(System.out::println);
}
No, unless in that file format the line lengths are pre-determined (e.g. all lines with a fixed length), you'll have to iterate line by line to count them.
In Java 8,
For small files:
String line = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("file.txt")).get(n);
For large files:
String line;
try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(Paths.get("file.txt"))) {
line = lines.skip(n).findFirst().get();
}
In Java 7
String line;
try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("file.txt"))) {
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
br.readLine();
line = br.readLine();
}
Source: Reading nth line from file
If you are talking about a text file, then there is really no way to do this without reading all the lines that precede it - After all, lines are determined by the presence of a newline, so it has to be read.
Use a stream that supports readline, and just read the first X-1 lines and dump the results, then process the next one.
It works for me:
I have combined the answer of
Reading a simple text file
But instead of return a String I am returning a LinkedList of Strings. Then I can select the line that I want.
public static LinkedList<String> readFromAssets(Context context, String filename) throws IOException {
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(context.getAssets().open(filename)));
LinkedList<String>linkedList = new LinkedList<>();
// do reading, usually loop until end of file reading
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
String mLine = reader.readLine();
while (mLine != null) {
linkedList.add(mLine);
sb.append(mLine); // process line
mLine = reader.readLine();
}
reader.close();
return linkedList;
}
Use this code:
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
public class FileWork
{
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
String line = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("D:/abc.txt")).get(1);
System.out.println(line);
}
}
You can use LineNumberReader instead of BufferedReader. Go through the api. You can find setLineNumber and getLineNumber methods.
You can also take a look at LineNumberReader, subclass of BufferedReader. Along with the readline method, it also has setter/getter methods to access line number. Very useful to keep track of the number of lines read, while reading data from file.
public String readLine(int line){
FileReader tempFileReader = null;
BufferedReader tempBufferedReader = null;
try { tempFileReader = new FileReader(textFile);
tempBufferedReader = new BufferedReader(tempFileReader);
} catch (Exception e) { }
String returnStr = "ERROR";
for(int i = 0; i < line - 1; i++){
try { tempBufferedReader.readLine(); } catch (Exception e) { }
}
try { returnStr = tempBufferedReader.readLine(); } catch (Exception e) { }
return returnStr;
}
you can use the skip() function to skip the lines from begining.
public static void readFile(String filePath, long lineNum) {
List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
long totalLines, startLine = 0;
try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(Paths.get(filePath))) {
totalLines = Files.lines(Paths.get(filePath)).count();
startLine = totalLines - lineNum;
// Stream<String> line32 = lines.skip(((startLine)+1));
list = lines.skip(startLine).collect(Collectors.toList());
// lines.forEach(list::add);
} catch (IOException e1) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e1.printStackTrace();
}
list.forEach(System.out::println);
}
EASY WAY - Reading a line using line number.
Let's say Line number starts from 1 till null .
public class TextFileAssignmentOct {
private void readData(int rowNum, BufferedReader br) throws IOException {
int n=1; //Line number starts from 1
String row;
while((row=br.readLine()) != null) { // Reads every line
if (n == rowNum) { // When Line number matches with which you want to read
System.out.println(row);
}
n++; //This increments Line number
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
File f = new File("../JavaPractice/FileRead.txt");
FileReader fr = new FileReader(f);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(fr);
TextFileAssignmentOct txf = new TextFileAssignmentOct();
txf.readData(4, br); //Read a Specific Line using Line number and Passing buffered reader
}
}
for a text file you can use an integer with a loop to help you get the number of the line, don't forget to import the classes we are using in this example
File myObj = new File("C:\\Users\\LENOVO\\Desktop\\test.txt");//path of the file
FileReader fr = new FileReader(myObj);
fr.read();
BufferedReader bf = new BufferedReader(fr); //BufferedReader of the FileReader fr
String line = bf.readLine();
int lineNumber = 0;
while (line != null) {
lineNumber = lineNumber + 1;
if(lineNumber == 7)
{
//show line
System.out.println("line: " + lineNumber + " has :" + line);
break;
}
//lecture de la prochaine ligne, reading next
line = bf.readLine();
}
They are all wrong I just wrote this in about 10 seconds.
With this I managed to just call the object.getQuestion("linenumber") in the main method to return whatever line I want.
public class Questions {
File file = new File("Question2Files/triviagame1.txt");
public Questions() {
}
public String getQuestion(int numLine) throws IOException {
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
String line = "";
for(int i = 0; i < numLine; i++) {
line = br.readLine();
}
return line; }}

Converting a set of characters into a different string array using java

I am trying to read a data from a file. I have following code.
public void ReadFile()
{
File sdcard = android.os.Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory();
File directory = new File(sdcard.getAbsolutePath()+ "/MyDirectory");
File file = new File(directory,"textfile1.txt");
try (FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(file)) {
char stringComma = new Character(',');
System.out.println("Total file size to read (in bytes) : "+ fis.available());
int content;
while ((content = fis.read()) != -1) {
// convert to char and display it
Log.d(TAG, "reading a file");
System.out.print((char) content);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
I have file format as follows [textfile1.txt]
[12],84359768069 //some numbers
[34],56845745740
[44],36344679992
[99],46378467467
When i am reading this file each character will read at a time. I want to split this and store in different string arrays like
str1 = [12]
str2 = 84359768069
How i can achieve this?
You're currently reading a byte at a time, because you're using InputStream. That's the first thing to fix - you should be using a Reader for text data. The best approach is to wrap your InputStream in an InputStreamReader.
Next, it sounds like you want to read a line at a time rather than just a character at a time. The easiest way of doing that is to use a BufferedReader wrapping an InputStreamReader.
(If you were using Java 7+, all of this could be achieved very nicely using Files.newBufferedReader - you just need to supply the Path and the Charset. Until Android supports that, you'll need to just do the wrapping manually. It's not too painful though.)
One you're reading a line at a time, you then need to split the line by comma - look at using String.split for this. I would then suggest you create a class to store these two separate values. So each line will be transformed into an instance of your class.
Finally, create a List<YourCustomClass> and add to it as you read the file.
That's given an overview of how to achieve each step - hopefully enough detail to enable you to get going, but not spoon-feeding you enough to hamper you actually learning from the experience.
A simple solution would be to parse the readed characters:
public void ReadFile()
{
File sdcard = android.os.Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory();
File directory = new File(sdcard.getAbsolutePath()+ "/MyDirectory");
File file = new File(directory,"textfile1.txt");
try (FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(file)) {
char stringComma = new Character(',');
System.out.println("Total file size to read (in bytes) : "+ fis.available());
int content;
String str1="";
String str2 = "";
boolean commaFound=false;
while ((content = fis.read()) != -1) {
// convert to char and display it
Log.d(TAG, "reading a file");
if ((char)content==',')
{
commaFound = true;
}
else if ((char)content=="\n")
{
System.out.printlnt("str1="+str1+"\nstr2="+str2);
commaFound = false;
str1 = "";
str2 = "";
}
else
{
if (commaFound)
{
str2 += (char)content;
}
else
{
str1 += (char)content;
}
}
System.out.print((char) content);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}

BufferedReader: read multiple lines into a single string

I'm reading numbers from a txt file using BufferedReader for analysis. The way I'm going about this now is- reading a line using .readline, splitting this string into an array of strings using .split
public InputFile () {
fileIn = null;
//stuff here
fileIn = new FileReader((filename + ".txt"));
buffIn = new BufferedReader(fileIn);
return;
//stuff here
}
public String ReadBigStringIn() {
String line = null;
try { line = buffIn.readLine(); }
catch(IOException e){};
return line;
}
public ProcessMain() {
initComponents();
String[] stringArray;
String line;
try {
InputFile stringIn = new InputFile();
line = stringIn.ReadBigStringIn();
stringArray = line.split("[^0-9.+Ee-]+");
// analysis etc.
}
}
This works fine, but what if the txt file has multiple lines of text? Is there a way to output a single long string, or perhaps another way of doing it? Maybe use while(buffIn.readline != null) {}? Not sure how to implement this.
Ideas appreciated,
thanks.
You are right, a loop would be needed here.
The usual idiom (using only plain Java) is something like this:
public String ReadBigStringIn(BufferedReader buffIn) throws IOException {
StringBuilder everything = new StringBuilder();
String line;
while( (line = buffIn.readLine()) != null) {
everything.append(line);
}
return everything.toString();
}
This removes the line breaks - if you want to retain them, don't use the readLine() method, but simply read into a char[] instead (and append this to your StringBuilder).
Please note that this loop will run until the stream ends (and will block if it doesn't end), so if you need a different condition to finish the loop, implement it in there.
I would strongly advice using library here but since Java 8 you can do this also using streams.
try (InputStreamReader in = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
BufferedReader buffer = new BufferedReader(in)) {
final String fileAsText = buffer.lines().collect(Collectors.joining());
System.out.println(fileAsText);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
You can notice also that it is pretty effective as joining is using StringBuilder internally.
If you just want to read the entirety of a file into a string, I suggest you use Guava's Files class:
String text = Files.toString("filename.txt", Charsets.UTF_8);
Of course, that's assuming you want to maintain the linebreaks. If you want to remove the linebreaks, you could either load it that way and then use String.replace, or you could use Guava again:
List<String> lines = Files.readLines(new File("filename.txt"), Charsets.UTF_8);
String joined = Joiner.on("").join(lines);
Sounds like you want Apache IO FileUtils
String text = FileUtils.readStringFromFile(new File(filename + ".txt"));
String[] stringArray = text.split("[^0-9.+Ee-]+");
If you create a StringBuilder, then you can append every line to it, and return the String using toString() at the end.
You can replace your ReadBigStringIn() with
public String ReadBigStringIn() {
StringBuilder b = new StringBuilder();
try {
String line = buffIn.readLine();
while (line != null) {
b.append(line);
line = buffIn.readLine();
}
}
catch(IOException e){};
return b.toString();
}
You have a file containing doubles. Looks like you have more than one number per line, and may have multiple lines.
Simplest thing to do is read lines in a while loop.
You could return null from your ReadBigStringIn method when last line is reached and terminate your loop there.
But more normal would be to create and use the reader in one method. Perhaps you could change to a method which reads the file and returns an array or list of doubles.
BTW, could you simply split your strings by whitespace?
Reading a whole file into a single String may suit your particular case, but be aware that it could cause a memory explosion if your file was very large. Streaming approach is generally safer for such i/o.
This creates a long string, every line is seprateted from string " " (one space):
public String ReadBigStringIn() {
StringBuffer line = new StringBuffer();
try {
while(buffIn.ready()) {
line.append(" " + buffIn.readLine());
} catch(IOException e){
e.printStackTrace();
}
return line.toString();
}

Java: How to read a text file

I want to read a text file containing space separated values. Values are integers.
How can I read it and put it in an array list?
Here is an example of contents of the text file:
1 62 4 55 5 6 77
I want to have it in an arraylist as [1, 62, 4, 55, 5, 6, 77]. How can I do it in Java?
You can use Files#readAllLines() to get all lines of a text file into a List<String>.
for (String line : Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("/path/to/file.txt"))) {
// ...
}
Tutorial: Basic I/O > File I/O > Reading, Writing and Creating text files
You can use String#split() to split a String in parts based on a regular expression.
for (String part : line.split("\\s+")) {
// ...
}
Tutorial: Numbers and Strings > Strings > Manipulating Characters in a String
You can use Integer#valueOf() to convert a String into an Integer.
Integer i = Integer.valueOf(part);
Tutorial: Numbers and Strings > Strings > Converting between Numbers and Strings
You can use List#add() to add an element to a List.
numbers.add(i);
Tutorial: Interfaces > The List Interface
So, in a nutshell (assuming that the file doesn't have empty lines nor trailing/leading whitespace).
List<Integer> numbers = new ArrayList<>();
for (String line : Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("/path/to/file.txt"))) {
for (String part : line.split("\\s+")) {
Integer i = Integer.valueOf(part);
numbers.add(i);
}
}
If you happen to be at Java 8 already, then you can even use Stream API for this, starting with Files#lines().
List<Integer> numbers = Files.lines(Paths.get("/path/to/test.txt"))
.map(line -> line.split("\\s+")).flatMap(Arrays::stream)
.map(Integer::valueOf)
.collect(Collectors.toList());
Tutorial: Processing data with Java 8 streams
Java 1.5 introduced the Scanner class for handling input from file and streams.
It is used for getting integers from a file and would look something like this:
List<Integer> integers = new ArrayList<Integer>();
Scanner fileScanner = new Scanner(new File("c:\\file.txt"));
while (fileScanner.hasNextInt()){
integers.add(fileScanner.nextInt());
}
Check the API though. There are many more options for dealing with different types of input sources, differing delimiters, and differing data types.
This example code shows you how to read file in Java.
import java.io.*;
/**
* This example code shows you how to read file in Java
*
* IN MY CASE RAILWAY IS MY TEXT FILE WHICH I WANT TO DISPLAY YOU CHANGE WITH YOUR OWN
*/
public class ReadFileExample
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
System.out.println("Reading File from Java code");
//Name of the file
String fileName="RAILWAY.txt";
try{
//Create object of FileReader
FileReader inputFile = new FileReader(fileName);
//Instantiate the BufferedReader Class
BufferedReader bufferReader = new BufferedReader(inputFile);
//Variable to hold the one line data
String line;
// Read file line by line and print on the console
while ((line = bufferReader.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(line);
}
//Close the buffer reader
bufferReader.close();
}catch(Exception e){
System.out.println("Error while reading file line by line:" + e.getMessage());
}
}
}
Look at this example, and try to do your own:
import java.io.*;
public class ReadFile {
public static void main(String[] args){
String string = "";
String file = "textFile.txt";
// Reading
try{
InputStream ips = new FileInputStream(file);
InputStreamReader ipsr = new InputStreamReader(ips);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(ipsr);
String line;
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null){
System.out.println(line);
string += line + "\n";
}
br.close();
}
catch (Exception e){
System.out.println(e.toString());
}
// Writing
try {
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter (file);
BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter (fw);
PrintWriter fileOut = new PrintWriter (bw);
fileOut.println (string+"\n test of read and write !!");
fileOut.close();
System.out.println("the file " + file + " is created!");
}
catch (Exception e){
System.out.println(e.toString());
}
}
}
Just for fun, here's what I'd probably do in a real project, where I'm already using all my favourite libraries (in this case Guava, formerly known as Google Collections).
String text = Files.toString(new File("textfile.txt"), Charsets.UTF_8);
List<Integer> list = Lists.newArrayList();
for (String s : text.split("\\s")) {
list.add(Integer.valueOf(s));
}
Benefit: Not much own code to maintain (contrast with e.g. this). Edit: Although it is worth noting that in this case tschaible's Scanner solution doesn't have any more code!
Drawback: you obviously may not want to add new library dependencies just for this. (Then again, you'd be silly not to make use of Guava in your projects. ;-)
Use Apache Commons (IO and Lang) for simple/common things like this.
Imports:
import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
import org.apache.commons.lang3.ArrayUtils;
Code:
String contents = FileUtils.readFileToString(new File("path/to/your/file.txt"));
String[] array = ArrayUtils.toArray(contents.split(" "));
Done.
Using Java 7 to read files with NIO.2
Import these packages:
import java.nio.charset.Charset;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
This is the process to read a file:
Path file = Paths.get("C:\\Java\\file.txt");
if(Files.exists(file) && Files.isReadable(file)) {
try {
// File reader
BufferedReader reader = Files.newBufferedReader(file, Charset.defaultCharset());
String line;
// read each line
while((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(line);
// tokenize each number
StringTokenizer tokenizer = new StringTokenizer(line, " ");
while (tokenizer.hasMoreElements()) {
// parse each integer in file
int element = Integer.parseInt(tokenizer.nextToken());
}
}
reader.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
To read all lines of a file at once:
Path file = Paths.get("C:\\Java\\file.txt");
List<String> lines = Files.readAllLines(file, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
All the answers so far given involve reading the file line by line, taking the line in as a String, and then processing the String.
There is no question that this is the easiest approach to understand, and if the file is fairly short (say, tens of thousands of lines), it'll also be acceptable in terms of efficiency. But if the file is long, it's a very inefficient way to do it, for two reasons:
Every character gets processed twice, once in constructing the String, and once in processing it.
The garbage collector will not be your friend if there are lots of lines in the file. You're constructing a new String for each line, and then throwing it away when you move to the next line. The garbage collector will eventually have to dispose of all these String objects that you don't want any more. Someone's got to clean up after you.
If you care about speed, you are much better off reading a block of data and then processing it byte by byte rather than line by line. Every time you come to the end of a number, you add it to the List you're building.
It will come out something like this:
private List<Integer> readIntegers(File file) throws IOException {
List<Integer> result = new ArrayList<>();
RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile(file, "r");
byte buf[] = new byte[16 * 1024];
final FileChannel ch = raf.getChannel();
int fileLength = (int) ch.size();
final MappedByteBuffer mb = ch.map(FileChannel.MapMode.READ_ONLY, 0,
fileLength);
int acc = 0;
while (mb.hasRemaining()) {
int len = Math.min(mb.remaining(), buf.length);
mb.get(buf, 0, len);
for (int i = 0; i < len; i++)
if ((buf[i] >= 48) && (buf[i] <= 57))
acc = acc * 10 + buf[i] - 48;
else {
result.add(acc);
acc = 0;
}
}
ch.close();
raf.close();
return result;
}
The code above assumes that this is ASCII (though it could be easily tweaked for other encodings), and that anything that isn't a digit (in particular, a space or a newline) represents a boundary between digits. It also assumes that the file ends with a non-digit (in practice, that the last line ends with a newline), though, again, it could be tweaked to deal with the case where it doesn't.
It's much, much faster than any of the String-based approaches also given as answers to this question. There is a detailed investigation of a very similar issue in this question. You'll see there that there's the possibility of improving it still further if you want to go down the multi-threaded line.
read the file and then do whatever you want
java8
Files.lines(Paths.get("c://lines.txt")).collect(Collectors.toList());

Capture data read from file into string stream Java

I'm coming from a C++ background, so be kind on my n00bish queries...
I'd like to read data from an input file and store it in a stringstream. I can accomplish this in an easy way in C++ using stringstreams. I'm a bit lost trying to do the same in Java.
Following is a crude code/way I've developed where I'm storing the data read line-by-line in a string array. I need to use a string stream to capture my data into (rather than use a string array).. Any help?
char dataCharArray[] = new char[2];
int marker=0;
String inputLine;
String temp_to_write_data[] = new String[100];
// Now, read from output_x into stringstream
FileInputStream fstream = new FileInputStream("output_" + dataCharArray[0]);
// Convert our input stream to a BufferedReader
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader(fstream));
// Continue to read lines while there are still some left to read
while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null )
{
// Print file line to screen
// System.out.println (inputLine);
temp_to_write_data[marker] = inputLine;
marker++;
}
EDIT:
I think what I really wanted was a StringBuffer.
I need to read data from a file (into a StringBuffer, probably) and write/transfer all the data back to another file.
In Java, first preference should always be given to buying code from the library houses:
http://commons.apache.org/io/api-1.4/org/apache/commons/io/IOUtils.html
http://commons.apache.org/io/api-1.4/org/apache/commons/io/FileUtils.html
In short, what you need is this:
FileUtils.readFileToString(File file)
StringBuffer is one answer, but if you're just writing it to another file, then you can just open an OutputStream and write it directly out to the other file. Holding a whole file in memory is probably not a good idea.
In you simply want to read a file and write another one:
BufferedInputStream in = new BufferedInputStream( new FileInputStream( "in.txt" ) );
BufferedOutputStream out = new BufferedOutputStream( new FileOutputStream( "out.txt" ) );
int b;
while ( (b = in.read()) != -1 ) {
out.write( b );
}
If you want to read a file into a string:
StringWriter out = new StringWriter();
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader( new FileReader( "in.txt" ) );
int c;
while ( (c = in.read()) != -1 ) {
out.write( c );
}
StringBuffer buf = out.getBuffer();
This can be made more efficient if you read using byte arrays. But I recommend that you use the excellent apache common-io. IOUtils (http://commons.apache.org/io/api-1.4/org/apache/commons/io/IOUtils.html) will do the loop for you.
Also, you should remember to close the streams.
I also come from C++, and I was looking for a class similar to the C++ 'StringStreamReader', but I couldn't find it. In my case (which I think was very simple), I was trying to read a file line by line and then read a String and an Integer from each of these lines. My final solution was to use two objects of the class java.util.Scanner, so that I could use one of them to read the lines of the file directly to a String and use the second one to re-read the content of each line (now in the String) to the variables (a new String and a positive 'int'). Here's my code:
try {
//"path" is a String containing the path of the file we want to read
Scanner sc = new Scanner(new BufferedReader(new FileReader(new File(path))));
while (sc.hasNextLine()) { //while the file isn't over
Scanner scLine = new Scanner(sc.nextLine());
//sc.nextLine() returns the next line of the file into a String
//scLine will now proceed to scan (i.e. analyze) the content of the string
//and identify the string and the positive 'int' (what in C++ would be an 'unsigned int')
String s = scLine.next(); //this returns the string wanted
int x;
if (!scLine.hasNextInt() || (x = scLine.nextInt()) < 0) return false;
//scLine.hasNextInt() analyzes if the following pattern can be interpreted as an int
//scLine.nextInt() reads the int, and then we check if it is positive or not
//AT THIS POINT, WE ALREADY HAVE THE VARIABLES WANTED AND WE CAN DO
//WHATEVER WE WANT WITH THEM
//in my case, I put them into a HashMap called 'hm'
hm.put(s, x);
}
sc.close();
//we finally close the scanner to point out that we won't need it again 'till the next time
} catch (Exception e) {
return false;
}
return true;
Hope that helped.

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