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Read last n lines in reverse order

I am trying to read last n lines of a file in reverse order. Is this the most efficient way to do it? My file is not big but it could eventually grow to several GB. Also, I am trying to read last 10 lines but this one only returns last 9. Anything I am missing?
// Read n lines from the end of the file
public void readFromLast(File file, int lines) {
int readLines = 0;
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
RandomAccessFile randomAccessFile = null;
try {
randomAccessFile = new RandomAccessFile(file, "r");
long fileLength = file.length() - 1;
// Set the pointer at the last of the file
randomAccessFile.seek(fileLength);
for (long pointer = fileLength; pointer >= 0; pointer--) {
randomAccessFile.seek(pointer);
char c = (char) randomAccessFile.read();
builder.append(c);
if(c == '\n'){
builder = builder.reverse();
System.out.print(builder.toString());
readLines++;
builder = null;
builder = new StringBuilder();
if (readLines == lines + 1){
break;
}
}
}
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
log.info("FileNotFound " +e.getMessage()+ "occured while reading last n lines");
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
log.info("IOException" + e.getMessage() +" occured while reading last n lines");
} finally {
if (randomAccessFile != null) {
try {
randomAccessFile.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
log.info("IOException" + e.getMessage() +" occured while closing the file reading last n lines");
}
}
}
}

Your code is fine. I am pretty sure it is reading 1 more line than it should, not 1 less. You are probably reading file that does not have enough lines?
If you want to correct it remove +1 from if (readLines == lines + 1){ and it will be fine.
Also a tip instead of setting StringBuilder to null and creating it again you can use
bulder.setLength(0);
it is a bit cleaner

Java FileChannel Vs BufferedReader - Spring Batch - Reader

We process huge files (sometimes 50 GB each file). The application reads this one file and based on the business logic, it will write multiple output files (4-6).
The records in the file are of variable length and each field in a record is a delimiter separated.
Going by the understanding that reading a file using FileChannel with a ByteBuffer was always better than using a BufferedReader.readLine and then using a split by the delimiter.
BufferSizes tried 10240(10KB) and even more
Commit interval - 5000, 10000 etc
Below is how we used file channel to read:
Read byte by byte. Check if the read byte is a new line char(10) -
which means end of line.
check for delimiter bytes. capture the bytes read in a byte array(we initialized this byte array with a maximum field size of 350 bytes) until delimiter bytes are encountered.
convert these bytes read until this time, to String using UTF-8 encoding - new String(byteArr, 0, index,"UTF-8") to be specific - index is the number of bytes read until delimiter.
Using this method of reading the file using FileChannel took 57 minutes to process the file.
We want to decrease this time and tried using BufferredReader.readLine() and then use a split by delimiter, to see how it fares.
And shockingly the same file completed processing only in 7 minutes.
What's the catch here? Why FileChannel is taking more time than a buffered reader and then using a string split.
I was always under the assumption that ReadLine and Split combination will have a big performance impact?
Can any one throw light on if I was using FileChannel in a wrong way? One
Thanks in advance. Hope I have summarized the issue properly.
The below is sample code :
while (inputByteBuffer.hasRemaining() && (b = inputByteBuffer.get()) != 0){
boolean endOfField = false;
if (b == 10){
break;
}
else{
if (b == 94){//^
if (!inputByteBuffer.hasRemaining()){
inputByteBuffer.clear();
noOfBytes = inputFileChannel.read(inputByteBuffer);
inputByteBuffer.flip();
}
if (inputByteBuffer.hasRemaining()){
byte b2 = inputByteBuffer.get();
if (b2 == 124){//|
if (!inputByteBuffer.hasRemaining()){
inputByteBuffer.clear();
noOfBytes = inputFileChannel.read(inputByteBuffer);
inputByteBuffer.flip();
}
if (inputByteBuffer.hasRemaining()){
byte b3 = inputByteBuffer.get();
if (b3 == 94){//^
String field = new String(fieldBytes, 0, index, encoding);
if(fieldIndex == -1){
fields = new String[sizeFromAConfiguration];
}else{
fields[fieldIndex] = field;
}
fieldBytes = new byte[maxFieldSize];
endOfField = true;
fieldIndex++;
}
else{
fieldBytes = addFieldBytes(fieldBytes, b, index);
index++;
fieldBytes = addFieldBytes(fieldBytes, b2, index);
index++;
fieldBytes = addFieldBytes(fieldBytes, b3, index);
}
}
else{
endOfFile = true;
//fields.add(new String(fieldBytes, 0, index, encoding));
fields[fieldIndex] = new String(fieldBytes, 0, index, encoding);
fieldBytes = new byte[maxFieldSize];
endOfField = true;
}
}else{
fieldBytes = addFieldBytes(fieldBytes, b, index);
index++;
fieldBytes = addFieldBytes(fieldBytes, b2, index);
}
}else{
endOfFile = true;
fieldBytes = addFieldBytes(fieldBytes, b, index);
}
}
else{
fieldBytes = addFieldBytes(fieldBytes, b, index);
}
}
if (!inputByteBuffer.hasRemaining()){
inputByteBuffer.clear();
noOfBytes = inputFileChannel.read(inputByteBuffer);
inputByteBuffer.flip();
}
if (endOfField){
index = 0;
}
else{
index++;
}
}

You're causing a lot of overhead with the constant hasRemaining()/read() checks as well as the constant get() calls. It would probably be better to get() the entire buffer into an array and process that directly, only calling read() when you get to the end.
And to answer a question in comments, you should not allocate a new ByteBuffer per read. This is expensive. Keep using the same one. And NB do not use a DirectByteBuffer for this application. It is not appropriate: it's only appropriate when you want the data to stay south of the JVM/JNI boundary, e.g. when merely copying between channels.
But I think I would throw this away, or rather rewrite it, using BufferedReader.read(), rather than readLine() followed by string splits, and using much the same logic as you have here, except of course that you don't need to keep calling hasRemaining() and filling the buffer, which BufferedReader will do automatically for you.
You have to take care to store the result of read() into an int, and to check it for -1 after every read().
It isn't clear to me that you should be using a Reader at all actually, unless you know you have multibyte text. Possibly a simple BufferedInputStream would be more appropriate.

While one cannot tell with certainty how a particular code will behave I would imagine the best way is to profile it just like you did.The FileChannel while percieved to be faster is actually not helping in your case.But this may not be because of reading from the file but actual processing that you do with the content you read.
One article I would like to point out while dealing with files is
https://www.redgreencode.com/why-is-java-io-slow/
Also the corresponding Github codebase
Java IO benchmark
I would like to point out this code to use a combination of both worlds
fos = new FileOutputStream(outputFile);
outFileChannel = fos.getChannel();
bufferedWriter = new BufferedWriter(Channels.newWriter(outFileChannel, "UTF-8"));
Since it is read in your case I will consider
File inputFile = new File("C:\\input.txt");
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(inputFile);
FileChannel inputChannel = fis.getChannel();
BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(Channels.newReader(inputChannel,"UTF-8"));
Also I will tweak the chunksize and with Spring batch it is always trial and error to find sweet spot.
On a completely unrelated note the reason for your problem of not able to use BufferedReader is because of doubling of charecters and I am assuming this happens more commonly with ebcdic charecters.I will simply run a loop like this to identfy the troublemakers and eliminate at the source.
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
public class EbcdicConvertor {
public static void main(String[] args) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
int index = 0;
for (int i = -127; i < 128; i++) {
byte[] b = new byte[1];
b[0] = (byte) i;
String cp037 = new String(b, "CP037");
if (cp037.getBytes().length == 2) {
index++;
System.out.println(i + "::" + cp037);
}
}
System.out.println(index);
}
}
The above answer is without testing my actual hypothesis.Here is an actual program to measure time.The results speak for themselves on a 200 MB file
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.RandomAccessFile;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import java.nio.channels.Channels;
import java.nio.channels.FileChannel;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Scanner;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class ReadComplexDelimitedFile {
private static long total = 0;
private static final Pattern DELIMITER_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("\\^\\|\\^");
private void readFileUsingScanner() {
String s;
try (Scanner stdin = new Scanner(new File(this.getClass().getResource("input.txt").getPath()))) {
while (stdin.hasNextLine()) {
s = stdin.nextLine();
String[] fields = DELIMITER_PATTERN.split(s, 0);
total = total + fields.length;
}
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Error");
}
}
private void readFileUsingCustomBufferedReader() {
try (BufferedReader stdin = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(new File(this.getClass().getResource("input.txt").getPath())))) {
String s;
while ((s = stdin.readLine()) != null) {
String[] fields = DELIMITER_PATTERN.split(s, 0);
total += fields.length;
}
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Error");
}
}
private void readFileUsingBufferedReader() {
try (java.io.BufferedReader stdin = new java.io.BufferedReader(new FileReader(new File(this.getClass().getResource("input.txt").getPath())))) {
String s;
while ((s = stdin.readLine()) != null) {
String[] fields = DELIMITER_PATTERN.split(s, 0);
total += fields.length;
}
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Error");
}
}
private void readFileUsingBufferedReaderFileChannel() {
try (FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(this.getClass().getResource("input.txt").getPath())) {
try (FileChannel inputChannel = fis.getChannel()) {
try (BufferedReader stdin = new BufferedReader(Channels.newReader(inputChannel, "UTF-8"))) {
String s;
while ((s = stdin.readLine()) != null) {
String[] fields = DELIMITER_PATTERN.split(s, 0);
total = total + fields.length;
}
}
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Error");
}
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Error");
}
}
private void readFileUsingBufferedReaderByteFileChannel() {
try (FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(this.getClass().getResource("input.txt").getPath())) {
try (FileChannel inputChannel = fis.getChannel()) {
try (BufferedReader stdin = new BufferedReader(Channels.newReader(inputChannel, "UTF-8"))) {
int b;
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
while ((b = stdin.read()) != -1) {
if (b == 10) {
total = total + DELIMITER_PATTERN.split(sb, 0).length;
sb = new StringBuilder();
} else {
sb.append((char) b);
}
}
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Error");
}
}
private void readFileUsingFileChannelStream() {
try (RandomAccessFile fis = new RandomAccessFile(new File(this.getClass().getResource("input.txt").getPath()), "r")) {
try (FileChannel inputChannel = fis.getChannel()) {
ByteBuffer byteBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(8192);
ByteBuffer recordBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(250);
int recordLength = 0;
while ((inputChannel.read(byteBuffer)) != -1) {
byte b;
byteBuffer.flip();
while (byteBuffer.hasRemaining() && (b = byteBuffer.get()) != -1) {
if (b == 10) {
recordBuffer.flip();
total = total + splitIntoFields(recordBuffer, recordLength);
recordBuffer.clear();
recordLength = 0;
} else {
++recordLength;
recordBuffer.put(b);
}
}
byteBuffer.clear();
}
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
private int splitIntoFields(ByteBuffer recordBuffer, int recordLength) {
byte b;
String[] fields = new String[17];
int fieldCount = -1;
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < recordLength - 1; i++) {
b = recordBuffer.get(i);
if (b == 94 && recordBuffer.get(++i) == 124 && recordBuffer.get(++i) == 94) {
fields[++fieldCount] = sb.toString();
sb = new StringBuilder();
} else {
sb.append((char) b);
}
}
fields[++fieldCount] = sb.toString();
return fields.length;
}
public static void main(String args[]) {
//JVM wamrup
for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++) {
total += i;
}
// We know scanner is slow-Still warming up
ReadComplexDelimitedFile readComplexDelimitedFile = new ReadComplexDelimitedFile();
List<Long> longList = new ArrayList<>(50);
for (int i = 0; i < 50; i++) {
total = 0;
long startTime = System.nanoTime();
readComplexDelimitedFile.readFileUsingScanner();
long stopTime = System.nanoTime();
long timeDifference = stopTime - startTime;
longList.add(timeDifference);
}
System.out.println("Time taken for readFileUsingScanner");
longList.forEach(System.out::println);
// Actual performance test starts here
longList = new ArrayList<>(10);
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
total = 0;
long startTime = System.nanoTime();
readComplexDelimitedFile.readFileUsingBufferedReaderFileChannel();
long stopTime = System.nanoTime();
long timeDifference = stopTime - startTime;
longList.add(timeDifference);
}
System.out.println("Time taken for readFileUsingBufferedReaderFileChannel");
longList.forEach(System.out::println);
longList.clear();
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
total = 0;
long startTime = System.nanoTime();
readComplexDelimitedFile.readFileUsingBufferedReader();
long stopTime = System.nanoTime();
long timeDifference = stopTime - startTime;
longList.add(timeDifference);
}
System.out.println("Time taken for readFileUsingBufferedReader");
longList.forEach(System.out::println);
longList.clear();
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
total = 0;
long startTime = System.nanoTime();
readComplexDelimitedFile.readFileUsingCustomBufferedReader();
long stopTime = System.nanoTime();
long timeDifference = stopTime - startTime;
longList.add(timeDifference);
}
System.out.println("Time taken for readFileUsingCustomBufferedReader");
longList.forEach(System.out::println);
longList.clear();
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
total = 0;
long startTime = System.nanoTime();
readComplexDelimitedFile.readFileUsingBufferedReaderByteFileChannel();
long stopTime = System.nanoTime();
long timeDifference = stopTime - startTime;
longList.add(timeDifference);
}
System.out.println("Time taken for readFileUsingBufferedReaderByteFileChannel");
longList.forEach(System.out::println);
longList.clear();
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
total = 0;
long startTime = System.nanoTime();
readComplexDelimitedFile.readFileUsingFileChannelStream();
long stopTime = System.nanoTime();
long timeDifference = stopTime - startTime;
longList.add(timeDifference);
}
System.out.println("Time taken for readFileUsingFileChannelStream");
longList.forEach(System.out::println);
}
}
BufferedReader was written very long back and hence we can rewrite some parts relevant to this example.For instance we don't care about \r and skipLF or skipCR or those kinds of stuff
We are going to read the file( no need for syncrhonized)
By extension no need for StringBuffer even otherwise StringBuilder can be used.Performance improvement immediately seen.
dangerous hack,remove synchronized and replace StringBuffer with StringBuilder don't use it without proper testing and not knowing what you are doing
public String readLine() throws IOException {
StringBuilder s = null;
int startChar;
bufferLoop:
for (; ; ) {
if (nextChar >= nChars)
fill();
if (nextChar >= nChars) { /* EOF */
if (s != null && s.length() > 0)
return s.toString();
else
return null;
}
boolean eol = false;
char c = 0;
int i;
/* Skip a leftover '\n', if necessary */
charLoop:
for (i = nextChar; i < nChars; i++) {
c = cb[i];
if (c == '\n') {
eol = true;
break charLoop;
}
}
startChar = nextChar;
nextChar = i;
if (eol) {
String str;
if (s == null) {
str = new String(cb, startChar, i - startChar);
} else {
s.append(cb, startChar, i - startChar);
str = s.toString();
}
nextChar++;
return str;
}
if (s == null)
s = new StringBuilder(defaultExpectedLineLength);
s.append(cb, startChar, i - startChar);
}
}
Java 8 Intel i5 12 GB RAM Windows 10
Result:
Time taken for readFileUsingBufferedReaderFileChannel::
2581635057 1849820885 1763992972 1770510738 1746444157 1733491399
1740530125 1723907177 1724280512 1732445638
Time taken for readFileUsingBufferedReader
1851027073 1775304769 1803507033 1789979554 1786974538 1802675458
1789672780 1798036307 1789847714 1785302003
Time taken for readFileUsingCustomBufferedReader
1745220476 1721039975 1715383650 1728548462 1724746005 1718177466
1738026017 1748077438 1724608192 1736294175
Time taken for readFileUsingBufferedReaderByteFileChannel
2872857919 2480237636 2917488143 2913491126 2880117231 2904614745
2911756298 2878777496 2892169722 2888091211
Time taken for readFileUsingFileChannelStream
3039447073 2896156498 2538389366 2906287280 2887612064 2929288046
2895626578 2955326255 2897535059 2884476915
Process finished with exit code 0

I did try NIO with all possible options(provided in this post and to the best of my knowledge and research) and found that it no where came close to BufferedReader in terms of reading a text file.
Changing BufferedReader to use StringBuilder in place of StringBuffer, I don't see any significant improvement in performance (only very few seconds for some files and some of them were better using StringBuffer itself).
Removing synchronized block also didn't give much/any improvement. And it's not worth to tweak something by which we didn't receive any benefit.
The below is the time taken(reading, processing, writing - time taken for processing and writing is not significant - not even 20% of time) for file which is around 50 GB
NIO : 71.67 (Minutes)
IO (BufferedReader) : 10.84 (Minutes)
Thank you all for your time to reading and responding to this post and providing suggestions.

The main issue here is creating a new byte[] very rapidly(fieldBytes = new byte[maxFieldSize];).
Since for every iteration a new array is being created, garbage collection is being kicked off very often which triggers "stop the world" to reclaim the memory.
And also, the object creation could be expensive.
We could rather initialize the byte array once and then track the indexes to just convert the field to string with an end index.
And anyway, BufferedReader is faster than FileChannel, atleast to read the ASCII files, and to keep the code simple, we continued using Bufferred Reader itself.
Using Bufferred reader, the development and testing effort can be reduced by not having tedious logic to find delimiters and populating the object.

How to reduce time taken by System.out.println();

I am inserting 2_000_000 long values in a list. Each time i insert, i need to print the size of the list to console using SOP. If i do not print size to console the insert finishes in 250 ms. If i print size each time i insert a value then time taken is 25000 ms.
Any idea how can i fix this performance issue?
I am using Java7 and Eclipse (kepler) to test my implementation.
Note: Printing the size each time i insert a long value is required and mandatory by the problem definition.

Try using a BufferedWriter. It allows efficient character writing.
Also, don't forget to call the flush method in the end so that all buffered data is outputted.
Working example:
List<Long> list = new ArrayList<>();
try (BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(System.out))) {
for(long i = 0; i < 2000000; i++) {
list.add(i);
bw.write("Current size:" + list.size());
bw.newLine();
if(i % 100 == 0 || i == 1999999) {
bw.flush();
}
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
A second option could be using a StringBuilder.
List<Long> list = new ArrayList<>();
String separator = System.getProperty("line.separator");
int initialCapacity = 200000;
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(initialCapacity);
for (long i = 0; i < 2000000; i++) {
list.add(i);
sb.append("Current size:").append(list.size()).append(separator);
if (i % 10000 == 0 || i == 1999999) {
System.out.println(sb);
sb = new StringBuilder(initialCapacity);
}
}

For example
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(System.out));
for (long myLong : values)
{
list.add(myLong);
writer.write(list.size());
}
Once you're completely done, or perhaps every 1000 inserts, call
writer.flush();

Trying to write a loop that uses an OutputStream to write to a text file

I'm not a java programmer, I'm a VB programmer. I am doing this as part of an assignment, however, I'm not asking for help on something assignment related. I'd like to figure out how to get the OutputStreamWriter to work properly in this instance. I just want to capture the values I'm generating and place them into a text document. The file is generated, but only one entry exists, not the 40 I'm expecting. I could do this in a heartbeat with VB, but java feels very strange to me right now. Your help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Steve
Here's the code:
public static void main(String[] args) {
long start, end;
double result,difference;
try {
//OutputStream code assistance from
// http://tutorials.jenkov.com/java-io/outputstreamwriter.html
OutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream("c:\\Temp\\output1.txt");
Writer out = new OutputStreamWriter(outputStream);
for(int n=1; n<=20; n++) {
//Calculate the Time for n^2.
start = System.nanoTime();
//Add code to call method to calculate n^2
result = mN2(n);
end = System.nanoTime();
difference = (end - start);
//Output results to a file
out.write("N^2 End time: " + end + " Difference: " +
difference + "\n");
out.close();
}
} catch (IOException e){
}
try {
OutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream("c:\\Temp\\output1.txt");
Writer out = new OutputStreamWriter(outputStream);
for(int n=1; n<=20; n++){
//Calculate the Time for 2^n.
start = System.nanoTime();
//Add code to call method to calculate 2^n
result = m2N(n);
end = System.nanoTime();
difference = (end - start);
//Output results to a file
out.write("N^2 End time: " + end + " Difference: " + difference + "\n");
out.close();
}
} catch (IOException e){
}
}
//Calculate N^2
public static double mN2(double n) {
n = n*n;
return n;
}
//Calculate 2N
public static double m2N(double n) {
n = 2*n;
return n;
}

You're closing your file within the loop. The next time around the loop you will attempt to write to the closed file, which will throw an exception...but where you catch IOException you have an empty block, which will effectively ignore the exception.
Trying moving the out.close() call into a finally block, like this:
try {
...
}
catch ( IOException e) {
// Log any errors
}
finally {
out.close();
}

How can I get the count of line in a file in an efficient way? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Number of lines in a file in Java
(19 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
I have a big file. It includes approximately 3.000-20.000 lines. How can I get the total count of lines in the file using Java?

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("file.txt"));
int lines = 0;
while (reader.readLine() != null) lines++;
reader.close();
Update: To answer the performance-question raised here, I made a measurement. First thing: 20.000 lines are too few, to get the program running for a noticeable time. I created a text-file with 5 million lines. This solution (started with java without parameters like -server or -XX-options) needed around 11 seconds on my box. The same with wc -l (UNIX command-line-tool to count lines), 11 seconds. The solution reading every single character and looking for '\n' needed 104 seconds, 9-10 times as much.

Files.lines
Java 8+ has a nice and short way using NIO using Files.lines. Note that you have to close the stream using try-with-resources:
long lineCount;
try (Stream<String> stream = Files.lines(path, StandardCharsets.UTF_8)) {
lineCount = stream.count();
}
If you don't specify the character encoding, the default one used is UTF-8. You may specify an alternate encoding to match your particular data file as shown in the example above.

use LineNumberReader
something like
public static int countLines(File aFile) throws IOException {
LineNumberReader reader = null;
try {
reader = new LineNumberReader(new FileReader(aFile));
while ((reader.readLine()) != null);
return reader.getLineNumber();
} catch (Exception ex) {
return -1;
} finally {
if(reader != null)
reader.close();
}
}

I found some solution for this, it might useful for you
Below is the code snippet for, count the no.of lines from the file.
File file = new File("/mnt/sdcard/abc.txt");
LineNumberReader lineNumberReader = new LineNumberReader(new FileReader(file));
lineNumberReader.skip(Long.MAX_VALUE);
int lines = lineNumberReader.getLineNumber();
lineNumberReader.close();

Read the file through and count the number of newline characters. An easy way to read a file in Java, one line at a time, is the java.util.Scanner class.

This is about as efficient as it can get, buffered binary read, no string conversion,
FileInputStream stream = new FileInputStream("/tmp/test.txt");
byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];
int count = 0;
int n;
while ((n = stream.read(buffer)) > 0) {
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
if (buffer[i] == '\n') count++;
}
}
stream.close();
System.out.println("Number of lines: " + count);

Do You need exact number of lines or only its approximation? I happen to process large files in parallel and often I don't need to know exact count of lines - I then revert to sampling. Split the file into ten 1MB chunks and count lines in each chunk, then multiply it by 10 and You'll receive pretty good approximation of line count.

All previous answers suggest to read though the whole file and count the amount of newlines you find while doing this. You commented some as "not effective" but thats the only way you can do that. A "line" is nothing else as a simple character inside the file. And to count that character you must have a look at every single character within the file.
I'm sorry, but you have no choice. :-)

This solution is about 3.6× faster than the top rated answer when tested on a file with 13.8 million lines. It simply reads the bytes into a buffer and counts the \n characters. You could play with the buffer size, but on my machine, anything above 8KB didn't make the code faster.
private int countLines(File file) throws IOException {
int lines = 0;
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(file);
byte[] buffer = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE]; // BUFFER_SIZE = 8 * 1024
int read;
while ((read = fis.read(buffer)) != -1) {
for (int i = 0; i < read; i++) {
if (buffer[i] == '\n') lines++;
}
}
fis.close();
return lines;
}

If the already posted answers aren't fast enough you'll probably have to look for a solution specific to your particular problem.
For example if these text files are logs that are only appended to and you regularly need to know the number of lines in them you could create an index. This index would contain the number of lines in the file, when the file was last modified and how large the file was then. This would allow you to recalculate the number of lines in the file by skipping over all the lines you had already seen and just reading the new lines.

Old post, but I have a solution that could be usefull for next people.
Why not just use file length to know what is the progression? Of course, lines has to be almost the same size, but it works very well for big files:
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
File file = new File("yourfilehere");
double fileSize = file.length();
System.out.println("=======> File size = " + fileSize);
InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream(file);
InputStreamReader inputStreamReader = new InputStreamReader(inputStream, "iso-8859-1");
BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(inputStreamReader);
int totalRead = 0;
try {
while (bufferedReader.ready()) {
String line = bufferedReader.readLine();
// LINE PROCESSING HERE
totalRead += line.length() + 1; // we add +1 byte for the newline char.
System.out.println("Progress ===> " + ((totalRead / fileSize) * 100) + " %");
}
} finally {
bufferedReader.close();
}
}
It allows to see the progression without doing any full read on the file. I know it depends on lot of elements, but I hope it will be usefull :).
[Edition]
Here is a version with estimated time. I put some SYSO to show progress and estimation. I see that you have a good time estimation errors after you have treated enough line (I try with 10M lines, and after 1% of the treatment, the time estimation was exact at 95%).
I know, some values has to be set in variable. This code is quickly written but has be usefull for me. Hope it will be for you too :).
long startProcessLine = System.currentTimeMillis();
int totalRead = 0;
long progressTime = 0;
double percent = 0;
int i = 0;
int j = 0;
int fullEstimation = 0;
try {
while (bufferedReader.ready()) {
String line = bufferedReader.readLine();
totalRead += line.length() + 1;
progressTime = System.currentTimeMillis() - startProcessLine;
percent = (double) totalRead / fileSize * 100;
if ((percent > 1) && i % 10000 == 0) {
int estimation = (int) ((progressTime / percent) * (100 - percent));
fullEstimation += progressTime + estimation;
j++;
System.out.print("Progress ===> " + percent + " %");
System.out.print(" - current progress : " + (progressTime) + " milliseconds");
System.out.print(" - Will be finished in ===> " + estimation + " milliseconds");
System.out.println(" - estimated full time => " + (progressTime + estimation));
}
i++;
}
} finally {
bufferedReader.close();
}
System.out.println("Ended in " + (progressTime) + " seconds");
System.out.println("Estimative average ===> " + (fullEstimation / j));
System.out.println("Difference: " + ((((double) 100 / (double) progressTime)) * (progressTime - (fullEstimation / j))) + "%");
Feel free to improve this code if you think it's a good solution.

Quick and dirty, but it does the job:
import java.io.*;
public class Counter {
public final static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
if (args.length > 0) {
File file = new File(args[0]);
System.out.println(countLines(file));
}
}
public final static int countLines(File file) throws IOException {
ProcessBuilder builder = new ProcessBuilder("wc", "-l", file.getAbsolutePath());
Process process = builder.start();
InputStream in = process.getInputStream();
LineNumberReader reader = new LineNumberReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
String line = reader.readLine();
if (line != null) {
return Integer.parseInt(line.trim().split(" ")[0]);
} else {
return -1;
}
}
}

Read the file line by line and increment a counter for each line until you have read the entire file.

Try the unix "wc" command. I don't mean use it, I mean download the source and see how they do it. It's probably in c, but you can easily port the behavior to java. The problem with making your own is to account for the ending cr/lf problem.

The buffered reader is overkill
Reader r = new FileReader("f.txt");
int count = 0;
int nextchar = 0;
while (nextchar != -1){
nextchar = r.read();
if (nextchar == Character.getNumericValue('\n') ){
count++;
}
}
My search for a simple example has createde one thats actually quite poor. calling read() repeadedly for a single character is less than optimal. see here for examples and measurements.