Scanner.next() and hasNext() creating infinite loop when reading from console [duplicate] - java

I ran into an issue. Below is my code, which asks user for input and prints out what the user inputs one word at a time.
The problem is that the program never ends, and from my limited understanding, it seem to get stuck inside the while loop. Could anyone help me a little?
import java.util.Scanner;
public class Test{
public static void main(String args[]){
System.out.print("Enter your sentence: ");
Scanner sc = new Scanner (System.in);
while (sc.hasNext() == true ) {
String s1 = sc.next();
System.out.println(s1);
}
System.out.println("The loop has been ended"); // This somehow never get printed.
}
}

You keep on getting new a new string and continue the loop if it's not empty. Simply insert a control in the loop for an exit string.
while(!s1.equals("exit") && sc.hasNext()) {
// operate
}
If you want to declare the string inside the loop and not to do the operations in the loop body if the string is "exit":
while(sc.hasNext()) {
String s1 = sc.next();
if(s1.equals("exit")) {
break;
}
//operate
}

The Scanner will continue to read until it finds an "end of file" condition.
As you're reading from stdin, that'll either be when you send an EOF character (usually ^d on Unix), or at the end of the file if you use < style redirection.

When you use scanner, as mentioned by Alnitak, you only get 'false' for hasNext() when you have a EOF character, basically... You cannot easily send and EOF character using the keyboard, therefore in situations like this, it's common to have a special character or word which you can send to stop execution, for example:
String s1 = sc.next();
if (s1.equals("exit")) {
break;
}
Break will get you out of the loop.

Your condition is right (though you should drop the == true). What is happening is that the scanner will keep going until it reaches the end of the input. Try Ctrl+D, or pipe the input from a file (java myclass < input.txt).

it doesn't work because you have not programmed a fail-safe into the code. java sees that the scanner can still collect input while there is input to be collected and if possible, while that is true, it keeps doing so. having a scanner test to see if a certain word, like EXIT for example, is fine, but you could also have it loop a certain number of times, like ten or so. but the most efficient approach is to ask the user of your program how many strings they wish to enter, and while the number of strings they enter is less than the number they put in, the program shall execute. an added option could be if they type EXIT, when they see they need less spaces than they put in and don't want to fill the next cells up with nothing but whitespace. and you could have the program ask if they want to enter more input, in case they realize they need to enter more data into the computer.
the program would be quite simplistic to make, as well because there are a plethera of ways you could do it. feel free to ask me for these ways, i'm running out of room though. XD

If you don't want to use an EOF character for this, you can use StringTokenizer :
import java.util.*;
public class Test{
public static void main(){
Scanner sc = new Scanner (System.in);
System.out.print("Enter your sentence: ");
String s=sc.nextLine();
StringTokenizer st=new StringTokenizer(s," ");//" " is the delimiter here.
while (st.hasMoreTokens() ) {
String s1 = st.nextToken();
System.out.println(s1);
}
System.out.println("The loop has been ended");
}
}

I had the same problem and I solved it by reading the full line from the console with one scanner object, and then parsing the resulting string using a second scanner object.
Scanner console = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.println("Enter input here:");
String inputLine = console.nextLine();
Scanner input = new Scanner(inputLine);
List<String> arg = new ArrayList<>();
while (input.hasNext()) {
arg.add(input.next().toLowerCase());
}

You can simply use one of the system dependent end-of-file indicators ( d for Unix/Linux/Ubuntu, z for windows) to make the while statement false. This should get you out of the loop nicely. :)

Modify the while loop as below. Declare s1 as String s1; one time outside the loop. To end the loop, simply use ctrl+z.
while (sc.hasNext())
{
s1 = sc.next();
System.out.println(s1);
System.out.print("Enter your sentence: ");
}

Related

Java display file line by line using Enter key

I'm trying to progress displaying a file line by line with an Enter key, but the if statement that I try doesn't seem to work. If I disregard the if statement, it works, but it feels incomplete because then I'm asking for input and doing nothing with it.
This is what I have:
import java.util.Scanner;
import java.io.*;
public class LineByLine {
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.println("What is the filename?");
String input = in.nextLine();
BufferedReader buff = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(input));
String sen = buff.readLine();
System.out.println(sen);
Scanner enter = new Scanner(System.in);
while (sen != null){
String output = enter.next();
if (output.equals("")){
System.out.println(sen = buff.readLine());
}
}
}
}
I just don't know why my if statement doesn't work.
The core issue is that you misunderstand Scanner and its default configuration: Out of the box, scanner splits on any amount of whitespace. .next() asks for the next token; a token is the thing that appears in between the whitespace.
Thus, pressing enter 500 times produces zero tokens. After all, tokens are what's in between the separator, and the default separator is 'any amount of whitespace'. Pressing enter a bunch of time is still just you entering the same separator.
The underlying problem is that most people appear to assume that Scanner reads one line at a time. It doesn't do that. At all. But you want it to. So, tell it to! Easy peasy - make scanner do what you already thought it did:
Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
in.useDelimiter("\\R"); // a single enter press is now the separator.
You should also stop using nextLine on scanners. nextLine and any other next call do not mix. The easiest way to solve this problem is to only ever use nextLine and nothing else, or, never use nextLine. With the above setup, .next() gets you a token which is an entire line - thus, no need for nextLine, which is good news, as nextLine is broken (it does what the spec says it should, but what it does is counterintuitive. We can debate semantics on whether 'broken' is a fair description of it. Point is, it doesn't do what you think it does).
Also, while you're at it, don't make multiple scanners. And, to improve this code, resources must be properly closed. You're not doing that. Let's use try-with, that's what it is for.
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
in.useDelimiter("\\R");
System.out.println("What is the filename?");
String input = in.next();
try (BufferedReader buff = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(input))) {
String sen = buff.readLine();
System.out.println(sen);
while (sen != null){
enter.next(); // why does it matter _what_ they entered?
// as long as they pressed it, we're good, right? Just ignore what it returns.
System.out.println(sen = buff.readLine());
}
}
}

Using scanner.next() outside loop yields weird results

Recently a friend of mine showed me her code seeking my advice on why it wouldn't work. Her original code was this:
public static void printStem(String word) ...
public static void main(String[] args)
{
Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.println("Please enter the words: ");
String word = keyboard.next();
printStem(word);
while (keyboard.hasNext())
{
printStem(word);
word = keybord.next();
}
}
This will yield really weird results. It will ask the user twice, then executes printStem twice (which might be expected), and after that goes ahead and always prints only the first entered corpus (word).
Eventually I figured out that it would work as expected when removing the keyboard.next() from outside the loop like so
public static void printStem(String word) ...
public static void main(String[] args)
{
Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.println("Please enter the words: ");
while (keyboard.hasNext())
{
String word = keybord.next();
printStem(word);
}
}
When asked why this would be I had no plausible explanation, as this should behave identical. My best guess is that something must be smelly with hasNext() but I couldn't figure out why exactly. So. What is going on here? Any explanation is appreciated :)
Some explanation about hasNext():
Returns true if this scanner has another token in its input.
This method may block while waiting for input to scan.
The scanner does not advance past any input.
In your first piece of code
you scan for a word: String word = keyboard.next();
You print it: printStem(word);
You enter into a while loop which waits until you give some input: keyboard.hasNext()
In step 3 you take the input but never store it in String word and you print it. Naturally previous value of word will be printed.
Then you do a next read by next().
Explanation for next():
Finds and returns the next complete token from this scanner. A complete token is preceded and followed by input that matches the delimiter pattern. This method may block while waiting for input to scan, even if a previous invocation of hasNext() returned true.
Hence you get a weird behavior.
This will yield really weird results
Yeah, because the logic is wrong.
You get the input
String word = keyboard.next();
print it
printStem(word);
then print it again, and ask for another word:
while (keyboard.hasNext())
{
printStem(word);
word = keybord.next();
}
So every time you loop you print the word they entered last time, rather than the word they entered this time. You just need to swap the two lines in the while-loop, which then makes the keyboard.next() and printStem(word) outside of the loop body redundant.
as this should behave identical
No it shouldn't. You reversed the order of operations in the while-loop body.

Incorrect example of Scanner in Java book?

I'm practicing HashSet from Java book by Cay S. Horstmann and Gary Cornell and I think there's a mistake in example code on page 687. We have a Scanner importing words to HashSet and it looks like this (I removed some unneeded code to make a problem more visible):
Set<String> words = new HashSet<String>();
Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
while (in.hasNext()) {
String word = in.next();
words.add(word);
}
The problem is there's no way stop this loop. Or maybe there's something I'm missing?
To stop the loop I've added another static helper method:
public static boolean isStop(Scanner in) {
if (in.next().equals("stop")) {
return true;
}
return false;
}
And now the main code looks like this:
Set<String> words = new HashSet<String>();
Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
while (!isStop(in)) {
String word = in.next();
words.add(word);
}
Is there any other way to stop scanner loop? I can't believe that book's author has made a mistake ?
The loop stops as soon as this condition is false:
in.hasNext()
I.e., there are no more words.
Inside the loop is a command to read the next word:
in.next()
So words will continue to be read until the Scanner has no more words to read. This loop will terminate at the end of whatever the Scanner is reading.
Since you are scanning System.in, the loop won't stop as it will keep on adding "words" to your Set but there's no visible error in the program.
Your idea of selecting a keyword to stop the loop once a user input matches that keyword sounds good.
You don't really need a static method using your Scanner as argument for that.
Just add the following after String word = in.next();:
if (word.equalsIgnoreCase("stop")) {
System.out.printf("Quitting with set: %s%n", words);
in.close();
return; // assuming method is void
}
The scanner will continue while there are still words in the input, as others explained. Note that when we're talking about System.in, it usually waits until the user enters more text, and so will not terminate until the user closes the stream (supplies the appropriate end-of-file for the operating system). In Unix/Linux, for the loop to terminate, the user will need to use control-D.
The loop won't stop as it will keep on adding "words" to your Set but there's no visible error in the program.
Your idea of selecting a keyword to stop the loop once a user input matches that keyword sounds good.
You don't really need a static method using your Scanner as argument for that.
Just add change your code as follows:
Set<String> words = new HashSet<String>();
Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.print("Type a word...");
while (in.hasNext()) {
String word = in.next();
if (word.equalsIgnoreCase("stop")) {
System.out.printf("Quitting with set: %s%n", words);
return; // assuming method is void
}
else {
words.add(word);
System.out.print("Type a word (or \"stop\" to quit)...");
}
}
IF there is code to be executed after the loop then yes, I'd say the authors made a mistake. Write to them about it! If this is an example of adding items to a Set then the example is fine. It all depends on what the authors' intent of the example was.
hasNext() is a blocking method meaning it will always wait for more input. There are related questions about this. Your way of "fixing this" is what the general consensus has done.

Reading lines of input from user using SCANNER

I have a program that needs to read lines of input. It needs to be many lines at once. For example:
As I enter my time machine or
maybe not,
I wonder whether free will exists?
I wonder whether free will exists
maybe not
as I enter my time machine or.
That all gets entered at one time by the user. I was trying to use .hasNextLine() method from Scanner class, but it is not returning false.... it waits for input again. Ive been looking around for a solution and it appears that .hasNextLine() waits for input, but i do not know what alternative to use. Any suggestions? The actual code looks like:
while(input.hasNextLine());
{
line += input.nextLine();
}
Thanks for your help
Perhaps you should use some sort of "stop" sequence meaning when the user enters a particular character sequence, it will break out the loop. It might look something like:
public static void main(String args[]){
final String stopSequence = "/stop";
final Scanner reader = new Scanner(System.in);
String input = reader.nextLine();
while(!input.equalsIgnoreCase(stopSequence)){
//process input
input = reader.nextLine();
}
}

How to get out of while loop in java with Scanner method "hasNext" as condition?

I ran into an issue. Below is my code, which asks user for input and prints out what the user inputs one word at a time.
The problem is that the program never ends, and from my limited understanding, it seem to get stuck inside the while loop. Could anyone help me a little?
import java.util.Scanner;
public class Test{
public static void main(String args[]){
System.out.print("Enter your sentence: ");
Scanner sc = new Scanner (System.in);
while (sc.hasNext() == true ) {
String s1 = sc.next();
System.out.println(s1);
}
System.out.println("The loop has been ended"); // This somehow never get printed.
}
}
You keep on getting new a new string and continue the loop if it's not empty. Simply insert a control in the loop for an exit string.
while(!s1.equals("exit") && sc.hasNext()) {
// operate
}
If you want to declare the string inside the loop and not to do the operations in the loop body if the string is "exit":
while(sc.hasNext()) {
String s1 = sc.next();
if(s1.equals("exit")) {
break;
}
//operate
}
The Scanner will continue to read until it finds an "end of file" condition.
As you're reading from stdin, that'll either be when you send an EOF character (usually ^d on Unix), or at the end of the file if you use < style redirection.
When you use scanner, as mentioned by Alnitak, you only get 'false' for hasNext() when you have a EOF character, basically... You cannot easily send and EOF character using the keyboard, therefore in situations like this, it's common to have a special character or word which you can send to stop execution, for example:
String s1 = sc.next();
if (s1.equals("exit")) {
break;
}
Break will get you out of the loop.
Your condition is right (though you should drop the == true). What is happening is that the scanner will keep going until it reaches the end of the input. Try Ctrl+D, or pipe the input from a file (java myclass < input.txt).
it doesn't work because you have not programmed a fail-safe into the code. java sees that the scanner can still collect input while there is input to be collected and if possible, while that is true, it keeps doing so. having a scanner test to see if a certain word, like EXIT for example, is fine, but you could also have it loop a certain number of times, like ten or so. but the most efficient approach is to ask the user of your program how many strings they wish to enter, and while the number of strings they enter is less than the number they put in, the program shall execute. an added option could be if they type EXIT, when they see they need less spaces than they put in and don't want to fill the next cells up with nothing but whitespace. and you could have the program ask if they want to enter more input, in case they realize they need to enter more data into the computer.
the program would be quite simplistic to make, as well because there are a plethera of ways you could do it. feel free to ask me for these ways, i'm running out of room though. XD
If you don't want to use an EOF character for this, you can use StringTokenizer :
import java.util.*;
public class Test{
public static void main(){
Scanner sc = new Scanner (System.in);
System.out.print("Enter your sentence: ");
String s=sc.nextLine();
StringTokenizer st=new StringTokenizer(s," ");//" " is the delimiter here.
while (st.hasMoreTokens() ) {
String s1 = st.nextToken();
System.out.println(s1);
}
System.out.println("The loop has been ended");
}
}
I had the same problem and I solved it by reading the full line from the console with one scanner object, and then parsing the resulting string using a second scanner object.
Scanner console = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.println("Enter input here:");
String inputLine = console.nextLine();
Scanner input = new Scanner(inputLine);
List<String> arg = new ArrayList<>();
while (input.hasNext()) {
arg.add(input.next().toLowerCase());
}
You can simply use one of the system dependent end-of-file indicators ( d for Unix/Linux/Ubuntu, z for windows) to make the while statement false. This should get you out of the loop nicely. :)
Modify the while loop as below. Declare s1 as String s1; one time outside the loop. To end the loop, simply use ctrl+z.
while (sc.hasNext())
{
s1 = sc.next();
System.out.println(s1);
System.out.print("Enter your sentence: ");
}

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