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How to delete a line of string in a text file - Java [duplicate]

I'm looking for a small code snippet that will find a line in file and remove that line (not content but line) but could not find. So for example I have in a file following:
myFile.txt:
aaa
bbb
ccc
ddd
Need to have a function like this: public void removeLine(String lineContent), and if I pass
removeLine("bbb"), I get file like this:
myFile.txt:
aaa
ccc
ddd

This solution may not be optimal or pretty, but it works. It reads in an input file line by line, writing each line out to a temporary output file. Whenever it encounters a line that matches what you are looking for, it skips writing that one out. It then renames the output file. I have omitted error handling, closing of readers/writers, etc. from the example. I also assume there is no leading or trailing whitespace in the line you are looking for. Change the code around trim() as needed so you can find a match.
File inputFile = new File("myFile.txt");
File tempFile = new File("myTempFile.txt");
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inputFile));
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile));
String lineToRemove = "bbb";
String currentLine;
while((currentLine = reader.readLine()) != null) {
// trim newline when comparing with lineToRemove
String trimmedLine = currentLine.trim();
if(trimmedLine.equals(lineToRemove)) continue;
writer.write(currentLine + System.getProperty("line.separator"));
}
writer.close();
reader.close();
boolean successful = tempFile.renameTo(inputFile);

public void removeLineFromFile(String file, String lineToRemove) {
try {
File inFile = new File(file);
if (!inFile.isFile()) {
System.out.println("Parameter is not an existing file");
return;
}
//Construct the new file that will later be renamed to the original filename.
File tempFile = new File(inFile.getAbsolutePath() + ".tmp");
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile));
String line = null;
//Read from the original file and write to the new
//unless content matches data to be removed.
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
if (!line.trim().equals(lineToRemove)) {
pw.println(line);
pw.flush();
}
}
pw.close();
br.close();
//Delete the original file
if (!inFile.delete()) {
System.out.println("Could not delete file");
return;
}
//Rename the new file to the filename the original file had.
if (!tempFile.renameTo(inFile))
System.out.println("Could not rename file");
}
catch (FileNotFoundException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
catch (IOException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
This I have found on the internet.

You want to do something like the following:
Open the old file for reading
Open a new (temporary) file for writing
Iterate over the lines in the old file (probably using a BufferedReader)
For each line, check if it matches what you are supposed to remove
If it matches, do nothing
If it doesn't match, write it to the temporary file
When done, close both files
Delete the old file
Rename the temporary file to the name of the original file
(I won't write the actual code, since this looks like homework, but feel free to post other questions on specific bits that you have trouble with)

So, whenever I hear someone mention that they want to filter out text, I immediately think to go to Streams (mainly because there is a method called filter which filters exactly as you need it to). Another answer mentions using Streams with the Apache commons-io library, but I thought it would be worthwhile to show how this can be done in standard Java 8. Here is the simplest form:
public void removeLine(String lineContent) throws IOException
{
File file = new File("myFile.txt");
List<String> out = Files.lines(file.toPath())
.filter(line -> !line.contains(lineContent))
.collect(Collectors.toList());
Files.write(file.toPath(), out, StandardOpenOption.WRITE, StandardOpenOption.TRUNCATE_EXISTING);
}
I think there isn't too much to explain there, basically Files.lines gets a Stream<String> of the lines of the file, filter takes out the lines we don't want, then collect puts all of the lines of the new file into a List. We then write the list over top of the existing file with Files.write, using the additional option TRUNCATE so the old contents of the file are replaced.
Of course, this approach has the downside of loading every line into memory as they all get stored into a List before being written back out. If we wanted to simply modify without storing, we would need to use some form of OutputStream to write each new line to a file as it passes through the stream, like this:
public void removeLine(String lineContent) throws IOException
{
File file = new File("myFile.txt");
File temp = new File("_temp_");
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter(temp));
Files.lines(file.toPath())
.filter(line -> !line.contains(lineContent))
.forEach(out::println);
out.flush();
out.close();
temp.renameTo(file);
}
Not much has been changed in this example. Basically, instead of using collect to gather the file contents into memory, we use forEach so that each line that makes it through the filter gets sent to the PrintWriter to be written out to the file immediately and not stored. We have to save it to a temporary file, because we can't overwrite the existing file at the same time as we are still reading from it, so then at the end, we rename the temp file to replace the existing file.

Using apache commons-io and Java 8 you can use
List<String> lines = FileUtils.readLines(file);
List<String> updatedLines = lines.stream().filter(s -> !s.contains(searchString)).collect(Collectors.toList());
FileUtils.writeLines(file, updatedLines, false);

public static void deleteLine() throws IOException {
RandomAccessFile file = new RandomAccessFile("me.txt", "rw");
String delete;
String task="";
byte []tasking;
while ((delete = file.readLine()) != null) {
if (delete.startsWith("BAD")) {
continue;
}
task+=delete+"\n";
}
System.out.println(task);
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("me.txt"));
writer.write(task);
file.close();
writer.close();
}

Here you go. This solution uses a DataInputStream to scan for the position of the string you want replaced and uses a FileChannel to replace the text at that exact position. It only replaces the first occurrence of the string that it finds. This solution doesn't store a copy of the entire file somewhere, (either the RAM or a temp file), it just edits the portion of the file that it finds.
public static long scanForString(String text, File file) throws IOException {
if (text.isEmpty())
return file.exists() ? 0 : -1;
// First of all, get a byte array off of this string:
byte[] bytes = text.getBytes(/* StandardCharsets.your_charset */);
// Next, search the file for the byte array.
try (DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(new FileInputStream(file))) {
List<Integer> matches = new LinkedList<>();
for (long pos = 0; pos < file.length(); pos++) {
byte bite = dis.readByte();
for (int i = 0; i < matches.size(); i++) {
Integer m = matches.get(i);
if (bytes[m] != bite)
matches.remove(i--);
else if (++m == bytes.length)
return pos - m + 1;
else
matches.set(i, m);
}
if (bytes[0] == bite)
matches.add(1);
}
}
return -1;
}
public static void replaceText(String text, String replacement, File file) throws IOException {
// Open a FileChannel with writing ability. You don't really need the read
// ability for this specific case, but there it is in case you need it for
// something else.
try (FileChannel channel = FileChannel.open(file.toPath(), StandardOpenOption.WRITE, StandardOpenOption.READ)) {
long scanForString = scanForString(text, file);
if (scanForString == -1) {
System.out.println("String not found.");
return;
}
channel.position(scanForString);
channel.write(ByteBuffer.wrap(replacement.getBytes(/* StandardCharsets.your_charset */)));
}
}
Example
Input: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Method Call:
replaceText("QRS", "000", new File("path/to/file");
Resulting File: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP000TUVWXYZ

Here is the complete Class. In the below file "somelocation" refers to the actual path of the file.
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
public class FileProcess
{
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
{
File inputFile = new File("C://somelocation//Demographics.txt");
File tempFile = new File("C://somelocation//Demographics_report.txt");
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inputFile));
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile));
String currentLine;
while((currentLine = reader.readLine()) != null) {
if(null!=currentLine && !currentLine.equalsIgnoreCase("BBB")){
writer.write(currentLine + System.getProperty("line.separator"));
}
}
writer.close();
reader.close();
boolean successful = tempFile.renameTo(inputFile);
System.out.println(successful);
}
}

This solution reads in an input file line by line, writing each line out to a StringBuilder variable. Whenever it encounters a line that matches what you are looking for, it skips writing that one out. Then it deletes file content and put the StringBuilder variable content.
public void removeLineFromFile(String lineToRemove, File f) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException{
//Reading File Content and storing it to a StringBuilder variable ( skips lineToRemove)
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
try (Scanner sc = new Scanner(f)) {
String currentLine;
while(sc.hasNext()){
currentLine = sc.nextLine();
if(currentLine.equals(lineToRemove)){
continue; //skips lineToRemove
}
sb.append(currentLine).append("\n");
}
}
//Delete File Content
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(f);
pw.close();
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(f, true));
writer.append(sb.toString());
writer.close();
}

Super simple method using maven/gradle+groovy.
public void deleteConfig(String text) {
File config = new File("/the/path/config.txt")
def lines = config.readLines()
lines.remove(text);
config.write("")
lines.each {line -> {
config.append(line+"\n")
}}
}

public static void deleteLine(String line, String filePath) {
File file = new File(filePath);
File file2 = new File(file.getParent() + "\\temp" + file.getName());
PrintWriter pw = null;
Scanner read = null;
FileInputStream fis = null;
FileOutputStream fos = null;
FileChannel src = null;
FileChannel dest = null;
try {
pw = new PrintWriter(file2);
read = new Scanner(file);
while (read.hasNextLine()) {
String currline = read.nextLine();
if (line.equalsIgnoreCase(currline)) {
continue;
} else {
pw.println(currline);
}
}
pw.flush();
fis = new FileInputStream(file2);
src = fis.getChannel();
fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
dest = fos.getChannel();
dest.transferFrom(src, 0, src.size());
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
pw.close();
read.close();
try {
fis.close();
fos.close();
src.close();
dest.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
if (file2.delete()) {
System.out.println("File is deleted");
} else {
System.out.println("Error occured! File: " + file2.getName() + " is not deleted!");
}
}
}

package com.ncs.cache;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
public class FileUtil {
public void removeLineFromFile(String file, String lineToRemove) {
try {
File inFile = new File(file);
if (!inFile.isFile()) {
System.out.println("Parameter is not an existing file");
return;
}
// Construct the new file that will later be renamed to the original
// filename.
File tempFile = new File(inFile.getAbsolutePath() + ".tmp");
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile));
String line = null;
// Read from the original file and write to the new
// unless content matches data to be removed.
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
if (!line.trim().equals(lineToRemove)) {
pw.println(line);
pw.flush();
}
}
pw.close();
br.close();
// Delete the original file
if (!inFile.delete()) {
System.out.println("Could not delete file");
return;
}
// Rename the new file to the filename the original file had.
if (!tempFile.renameTo(inFile))
System.out.println("Could not rename file");
} catch (FileNotFoundException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
FileUtil util = new FileUtil();
util.removeLineFromFile("test.txt", "bbbbb");
}
}
src : http://www.javadb.com/remove-a-line-from-a-text-file/

This solution requires the Apache Commons IO library to be added to the build path. It works by reading the entire file and writing each line back but only if the search term is not contained.
public static void removeLineFromFile(File targetFile, String searchTerm)
throws IOException
{
StringBuffer fileContents = new StringBuffer(
FileUtils.readFileToString(targetFile));
String[] fileContentLines = fileContents.toString().split(
System.lineSeparator());
emptyFile(targetFile);
fileContents = new StringBuffer();
for (int fileContentLinesIndex = 0; fileContentLinesIndex < fileContentLines.length; fileContentLinesIndex++)
{
if (fileContentLines[fileContentLinesIndex].contains(searchTerm))
{
continue;
}
fileContents.append(fileContentLines[fileContentLinesIndex] + System.lineSeparator());
}
FileUtils.writeStringToFile(targetFile, fileContents.toString().trim());
}
private static void emptyFile(File targetFile) throws FileNotFoundException,
IOException
{
RandomAccessFile randomAccessFile = new RandomAccessFile(targetFile, "rw");
randomAccessFile.setLength(0);
randomAccessFile.close();
}

I refactored the solution that Narek had to create (according to me) a slightly more efficient and easy to understand code. I used embedded Automatic Resource Management, a recent feature in Java and used a Scanner class which according to me is more easier to understand and use.
Here is the code with edited Comments:
public class RemoveLineInFile {
private static File file;
public static void main(String[] args) {
//create a new File
file = new File("hello.txt");
//takes in String that you want to get rid off
removeLineFromFile("Hello");
}
public static void removeLineFromFile(String lineToRemove) {
//if file does not exist, a file is created
if (!file.exists()) {
try {
file.createNewFile();
} catch (IOException e) {
System.out.println("File "+file.getName()+" not created successfully");
}
}
// Construct the new temporary file that will later be renamed to the original
// filename.
File tempFile = new File(file.getAbsolutePath() + ".tmp");
//Two Embedded Automatic Resource Managers used
// to effectivey handle IO Responses
try(Scanner scanner = new Scanner(file)) {
try (PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile))) {
//a declaration of a String Line Which Will Be assigned Later
String line;
// Read from the original file and write to the new
// unless content matches data to be removed.
while (scanner.hasNextLine()) {
line = scanner.nextLine();
if (!line.trim().equals(lineToRemove)) {
pw.println(line);
pw.flush();
}
}
// Delete the original file
if (!file.delete()) {
System.out.println("Could not delete file");
return;
}
// Rename the new file to the filename the original file had.
if (!tempFile.renameTo(file))
System.out.println("Could not rename file");
}
}
catch (IOException e)
{
System.out.println("IO Exception Occurred");
}
}
}

Try this:
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
File file = new File("file.csv");
CSVReader csvFileReader = new CSVReader(new FileReader(file));
List<String[]> list = csvFileReader.readAll();
for (int i = 0; i < list.size(); i++) {
String[] filter = list.get(i);
if (filter[0].equalsIgnoreCase("bbb")) {
list.remove(i);
}
}
csvFileReader.close();
CSVWriter csvOutput = new CSVWriter(new FileWriter(file));
csvOutput.writeAll(list);
csvOutput.flush();
csvOutput.close();
}

Old question, but an easy way is to:
Iterate through file, adding each line to an new array list
iterate through the array, find matching String, then call the remove method.
iterate through array again, printing each line to the file, boolean for append should be false, which basically replaces the file

This solution uses a RandomAccessFile to only cache the portion of the file subsequent to the string to remove. It scans until it finds the String you want to remove. Then it copies all of the data after the found string, then writes it over the found string, and everything after. Last, it truncates the file size to remove the excess data.
public static long scanForString(String text, File file) throws IOException {
if (text.isEmpty())
return file.exists() ? 0 : -1;
// First of all, get a byte array off of this string:
byte[] bytes = text.getBytes(/* StandardCharsets.your_charset */);
// Next, search the file for the byte array.
try (DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(new FileInputStream(file))) {
List<Integer> matches = new LinkedList<>();
for (long pos = 0; pos < file.length(); pos++) {
byte bite = dis.readByte();
for (int i = 0; i < matches.size(); i++) {
Integer m = matches.get(i);
if (bytes[m] != bite)
matches.remove(i--);
else if (++m == bytes.length)
return pos - m + 1;
else
matches.set(i, m);
}
if (bytes[0] == bite)
matches.add(1);
}
}
return -1;
}
public static void remove(String text, File file) throws IOException {
try (RandomAccessFile rafile = new RandomAccessFile(file, "rw");) {
long scanForString = scanForString(text, file);
if (scanForString == -1) {
System.out.println("String not found.");
return;
}
long remainderStartPos = scanForString + text.getBytes().length;
rafile.seek(remainderStartPos);
int remainderSize = (int) (rafile.length() - rafile.getFilePointer());
byte[] bytes = new byte[remainderSize];
rafile.read(bytes);
rafile.seek(scanForString);
rafile.write(bytes);
rafile.setLength(rafile.length() - (text.length()));
}
}
Usage:
File Contents: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Method Call: remove("ABC", new File("Drive:/Path/File.extension"));
Resulting Contents: DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
This solution could easily be modified to remove with a certain, specifiable cacheSize, if memory is a concern. This would just involve iterating over the rest of the file to continually replace portions of size, cacheSize. Regardless, this solution is generally much better than caching an entire file in memory, or copying it to a temporary directory, etc.

Reading in a txt file using scanner on Eclipse, what am i doing wrong. java [duplicate]

It seems there are different ways to read and write data of files in Java.
I want to read ASCII data from a file. What are the possible ways and their differences?

My favorite way to read a small file is to use a BufferedReader and a StringBuilder. It is very simple and to the point (though not particularly effective, but good enough for most cases):
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("file.txt"));
try {
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
String line = br.readLine();
while (line != null) {
sb.append(line);
sb.append(System.lineSeparator());
line = br.readLine();
}
String everything = sb.toString();
} finally {
br.close();
}
Some has pointed out that after Java 7 you should use try-with-resources (i.e. auto close) features:
try(BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("file.txt"))) {
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
String line = br.readLine();
while (line != null) {
sb.append(line);
sb.append(System.lineSeparator());
line = br.readLine();
}
String everything = sb.toString();
}
When I read strings like this, I usually want to do some string handling per line anyways, so then I go for this implementation.
Though if I want to actually just read a file into a String, I always use Apache Commons IO with the class IOUtils.toString() method. You can have a look at the source here:
http://www.docjar.com/html/api/org/apache/commons/io/IOUtils.java.html
FileInputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("foo.txt");
try {
String everything = IOUtils.toString(inputStream);
} finally {
inputStream.close();
}
And even simpler with Java 7:
try(FileInputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("foo.txt")) {
String everything = IOUtils.toString(inputStream);
// do something with everything string
}

ASCII is a TEXT file so you would use Readers for reading. Java also supports reading from a binary file using InputStreams. If the files being read are huge then you would want to use a BufferedReader on top of a FileReader to improve read performance.
Go through this article on how to use a Reader
I'd also recommend you download and read this wonderful (yet free) book called Thinking In Java
In Java 7:
new String(Files.readAllBytes(...))
(docs)
or
Files.readAllLines(...)
(docs)
In Java 8:
Files.lines(..).forEach(...)
(docs)

The easiest way is to use the Scanner class in Java and the FileReader object. Simple example:
Scanner in = new Scanner(new FileReader("filename.txt"));
Scanner has several methods for reading in strings, numbers, etc... You can look for more information on this on the Java documentation page.
For example reading the whole content into a String:
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
while(in.hasNext()) {
sb.append(in.next());
}
in.close();
outString = sb.toString();
Also if you need a specific encoding you can use this instead of FileReader:
new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(fileUtf8), StandardCharsets.UTF_8)

Here is a simple solution:
String content = new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get("sample.txt")));
Or to read as list:
List<String> content = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("sample.txt"))

Here's another way to do it without using external libraries:
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.IOException;
public String readFile(String filename)
{
String content = null;
File file = new File(filename); // For example, foo.txt
FileReader reader = null;
try {
reader = new FileReader(file);
char[] chars = new char[(int) file.length()];
reader.read(chars);
content = new String(chars);
reader.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
if(reader != null){
reader.close();
}
}
return content;
}

I had to benchmark the different ways. I shall comment on my findings but, in short, the fastest way is to use a plain old BufferedInputStream over a FileInputStream. If many files must be read then three threads will reduce the total execution time to roughly half, but adding more threads will progressively degrade performance until making it take three times longer to complete with twenty threads than with just one thread.
The assumption is that you must read a file and do something meaningful with its contents. In the examples here is reading lines from a log and count the ones which contain values that exceed a certain threshold. So I am assuming that the one-liner Java 8 Files.lines(Paths.get("/path/to/file.txt")).map(line -> line.split(";")) is not an option.
I tested on Java 1.8, Windows 7 and both SSD and HDD drives.
I wrote six different implementations:
rawParse: Use BufferedInputStream over a FileInputStream and then cut lines reading byte by byte. This outperformed any other single-thread approach, but it may be very inconvenient for non-ASCII files.
lineReaderParse: Use a BufferedReader over a FileReader, read line by line, split lines by calling String.split(). This is approximatedly 20% slower that rawParse.
lineReaderParseParallel: This is the same as lineReaderParse, but it uses several threads. This is the fastest option overall in all cases.
nioFilesParse: Use java.nio.files.Files.lines()
nioAsyncParse: Use an AsynchronousFileChannel with a completion handler and a thread pool.
nioMemoryMappedParse: Use a memory-mapped file. This is really a bad idea yielding execution times at least three times longer than any other implementation.
These are the average times for reading 204 files of 4 MB each on an quad-core i7 and SSD drive. The files are generated on the fly to avoid disk caching.
rawParse 11.10 sec
lineReaderParse 13.86 sec
lineReaderParseParallel 6.00 sec
nioFilesParse 13.52 sec
nioAsyncParse 16.06 sec
nioMemoryMappedParse 37.68 sec
I found a difference smaller than I expected between running on an SSD or an HDD drive being the SSD approximately 15% faster. This may be because the files are generated on an unfragmented HDD and they are read sequentially, therefore the spinning drive can perform nearly as an SSD.
I was surprised by the low performance of the nioAsyncParse implementation. Either I have implemented something in the wrong way or the multi-thread implementation using NIO and a completion handler performs the same (or even worse) than a single-thread implementation with the java.io API. Moreover the asynchronous parse with a CompletionHandler is much longer in lines of code and tricky to implement correctly than a straight implementation on old streams.
Now the six implementations followed by a class containing them all plus a parametrizable main() method that allows to play with the number of files, file size and concurrency degree. Note that the size of the files varies plus minus 20%. This is to avoid any effect due to all the files being of exactly the same size.
rawParse
public void rawParse(final String targetDir, final int numberOfFiles) throws IOException, ParseException {
overrunCount = 0;
final int dl = (int) ';';
StringBuffer lineBuffer = new StringBuffer(1024);
for (int f=0; f<numberOfFiles; f++) {
File fl = new File(targetDir+filenamePreffix+String.valueOf(f)+".txt");
FileInputStream fin = new FileInputStream(fl);
BufferedInputStream bin = new BufferedInputStream(fin);
int character;
while((character=bin.read())!=-1) {
if (character==dl) {
// Here is where something is done with each line
doSomethingWithRawLine(lineBuffer.toString());
lineBuffer.setLength(0);
}
else {
lineBuffer.append((char) character);
}
}
bin.close();
fin.close();
}
}
public final void doSomethingWithRawLine(String line) throws ParseException {
// What to do for each line
int fieldNumber = 0;
final int len = line.length();
StringBuffer fieldBuffer = new StringBuffer(256);
for (int charPos=0; charPos<len; charPos++) {
char c = line.charAt(charPos);
if (c==DL0) {
String fieldValue = fieldBuffer.toString();
if (fieldValue.length()>0) {
switch (fieldNumber) {
case 0:
Date dt = fmt.parse(fieldValue);
fieldNumber++;
break;
case 1:
double d = Double.parseDouble(fieldValue);
fieldNumber++;
break;
case 2:
int t = Integer.parseInt(fieldValue);
fieldNumber++;
break;
case 3:
if (fieldValue.equals("overrun"))
overrunCount++;
break;
}
}
fieldBuffer.setLength(0);
}
else {
fieldBuffer.append(c);
}
}
}
lineReaderParse
public void lineReaderParse(final String targetDir, final int numberOfFiles) throws IOException, ParseException {
String line;
for (int f=0; f<numberOfFiles; f++) {
File fl = new File(targetDir+filenamePreffix+String.valueOf(f)+".txt");
FileReader frd = new FileReader(fl);
BufferedReader brd = new BufferedReader(frd);
while ((line=brd.readLine())!=null)
doSomethingWithLine(line);
brd.close();
frd.close();
}
}
public final void doSomethingWithLine(String line) throws ParseException {
// Example of what to do for each line
String[] fields = line.split(";");
Date dt = fmt.parse(fields[0]);
double d = Double.parseDouble(fields[1]);
int t = Integer.parseInt(fields[2]);
if (fields[3].equals("overrun"))
overrunCount++;
}
lineReaderParseParallel
public void lineReaderParseParallel(final String targetDir, final int numberOfFiles, final int degreeOfParalelism) throws IOException, ParseException, InterruptedException {
Thread[] pool = new Thread[degreeOfParalelism];
int batchSize = numberOfFiles / degreeOfParalelism;
for (int b=0; b<degreeOfParalelism; b++) {
pool[b] = new LineReaderParseThread(targetDir, b*batchSize, b*batchSize+b*batchSize);
pool[b].start();
}
for (int b=0; b<degreeOfParalelism; b++)
pool[b].join();
}
class LineReaderParseThread extends Thread {
private String targetDir;
private int fileFrom;
private int fileTo;
private DateFormat fmt = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
private int overrunCounter = 0;
public LineReaderParseThread(String targetDir, int fileFrom, int fileTo) {
this.targetDir = targetDir;
this.fileFrom = fileFrom;
this.fileTo = fileTo;
}
private void doSomethingWithTheLine(String line) throws ParseException {
String[] fields = line.split(DL);
Date dt = fmt.parse(fields[0]);
double d = Double.parseDouble(fields[1]);
int t = Integer.parseInt(fields[2]);
if (fields[3].equals("overrun"))
overrunCounter++;
}
#Override
public void run() {
String line;
for (int f=fileFrom; f<fileTo; f++) {
File fl = new File(targetDir+filenamePreffix+String.valueOf(f)+".txt");
try {
FileReader frd = new FileReader(fl);
BufferedReader brd = new BufferedReader(frd);
while ((line=brd.readLine())!=null) {
doSomethingWithTheLine(line);
}
brd.close();
frd.close();
} catch (IOException | ParseException ioe) { }
}
}
}
nioFilesParse
public void nioFilesParse(final String targetDir, final int numberOfFiles) throws IOException, ParseException {
for (int f=0; f<numberOfFiles; f++) {
Path ph = Paths.get(targetDir+filenamePreffix+String.valueOf(f)+".txt");
Consumer<String> action = new LineConsumer();
Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(ph);
lines.forEach(action);
lines.close();
}
}
class LineConsumer implements Consumer<String> {
#Override
public void accept(String line) {
// What to do for each line
String[] fields = line.split(DL);
if (fields.length>1) {
try {
Date dt = fmt.parse(fields[0]);
}
catch (ParseException e) {
}
double d = Double.parseDouble(fields[1]);
int t = Integer.parseInt(fields[2]);
if (fields[3].equals("overrun"))
overrunCount++;
}
}
}
nioAsyncParse
public void nioAsyncParse(final String targetDir, final int numberOfFiles, final int numberOfThreads, final int bufferSize) throws IOException, ParseException, InterruptedException {
ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor pool = new ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor(numberOfThreads);
ConcurrentLinkedQueue<ByteBuffer> byteBuffers = new ConcurrentLinkedQueue<ByteBuffer>();
for (int b=0; b<numberOfThreads; b++)
byteBuffers.add(ByteBuffer.allocate(bufferSize));
for (int f=0; f<numberOfFiles; f++) {
consumerThreads.acquire();
String fileName = targetDir+filenamePreffix+String.valueOf(f)+".txt";
AsynchronousFileChannel channel = AsynchronousFileChannel.open(Paths.get(fileName), EnumSet.of(StandardOpenOption.READ), pool);
BufferConsumer consumer = new BufferConsumer(byteBuffers, fileName, bufferSize);
channel.read(consumer.buffer(), 0l, channel, consumer);
}
consumerThreads.acquire(numberOfThreads);
}
class BufferConsumer implements CompletionHandler<Integer, AsynchronousFileChannel> {
private ConcurrentLinkedQueue<ByteBuffer> buffers;
private ByteBuffer bytes;
private String file;
private StringBuffer chars;
private int limit;
private long position;
private DateFormat frmt = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
public BufferConsumer(ConcurrentLinkedQueue<ByteBuffer> byteBuffers, String fileName, int bufferSize) {
buffers = byteBuffers;
bytes = buffers.poll();
if (bytes==null)
bytes = ByteBuffer.allocate(bufferSize);
file = fileName;
chars = new StringBuffer(bufferSize);
frmt = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
limit = bufferSize;
position = 0l;
}
public ByteBuffer buffer() {
return bytes;
}
#Override
public synchronized void completed(Integer result, AsynchronousFileChannel channel) {
if (result!=-1) {
bytes.flip();
final int len = bytes.limit();
int i = 0;
try {
for (i = 0; i < len; i++) {
byte by = bytes.get();
if (by=='\n') {
// ***
// The code used to process the line goes here
chars.setLength(0);
}
else {
chars.append((char) by);
}
}
}
catch (Exception x) {
System.out.println(
"Caught exception " + x.getClass().getName() + " " + x.getMessage() +
" i=" + String.valueOf(i) + ", limit=" + String.valueOf(len) +
", position="+String.valueOf(position));
}
if (len==limit) {
bytes.clear();
position += len;
channel.read(bytes, position, channel, this);
}
else {
try {
channel.close();
}
catch (IOException e) {
}
consumerThreads.release();
bytes.clear();
buffers.add(bytes);
}
}
else {
try {
channel.close();
}
catch (IOException e) {
}
consumerThreads.release();
bytes.clear();
buffers.add(bytes);
}
}
#Override
public void failed(Throwable e, AsynchronousFileChannel channel) {
}
};
FULL RUNNABLE IMPLEMENTATION OF ALL CASES
https://github.com/sergiomt/javaiobenchmark/blob/master/FileReadBenchmark.java

Here are the three working and tested methods:
Using BufferedReader
package io;
import java.io.*;
public class ReadFromFile2 {
public static void main(String[] args)throws Exception {
File file = new File("C:\\Users\\pankaj\\Desktop\\test.java");
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
String st;
while((st=br.readLine()) != null){
System.out.println(st);
}
}
}
Using Scanner
package io;
import java.io.File;
import java.util.Scanner;
public class ReadFromFileUsingScanner {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
File file = new File("C:\\Users\\pankaj\\Desktop\\test.java");
Scanner sc = new Scanner(file);
while(sc.hasNextLine()){
System.out.println(sc.nextLine());
}
}
}
Using FileReader
package io;
import java.io.*;
public class ReadingFromFile {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
FileReader fr = new FileReader("C:\\Users\\pankaj\\Desktop\\test.java");
int i;
while ((i=fr.read()) != -1){
System.out.print((char) i);
}
}
}
Read the entire file without a loop using the Scanner class
package io;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.util.Scanner;
public class ReadingEntireFileWithoutLoop {
public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException {
File file = new File("C:\\Users\\pankaj\\Desktop\\test.java");
Scanner sc = new Scanner(file);
sc.useDelimiter("\\Z");
System.out.println(sc.next());
}
}

The methods within org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils may also be very handy, e.g.:
/**
* Reads the contents of a file line by line to a List
* of Strings using the default encoding for the VM.
*/
static List readLines(File file)

I documented 15 ways to read a file in Java and then tested them for speed with various file sizes - from 1 KB to 1 GB and here are the top three ways to do this:
java.nio.file.Files.readAllBytes()
Tested to work in Java 7, 8, and 9.
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
public class ReadFile_Files_ReadAllBytes {
public static void main(String [] pArgs) throws IOException {
String fileName = "c:\\temp\\sample-10KB.txt";
File file = new File(fileName);
byte [] fileBytes = Files.readAllBytes(file.toPath());
char singleChar;
for(byte b : fileBytes) {
singleChar = (char) b;
System.out.print(singleChar);
}
}
}
java.io.BufferedReader.readLine()
Tested to work in Java 7, 8, 9.
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.IOException;
public class ReadFile_BufferedReader_ReadLine {
public static void main(String [] args) throws IOException {
String fileName = "c:\\temp\\sample-10KB.txt";
FileReader fileReader = new FileReader(fileName);
try (BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(fileReader)) {
String line;
while((line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(line);
}
}
}
}
java.nio.file.Files.lines()
This was tested to work in Java 8 and 9 but won't work in Java 7 because of the lambda expression requirement.
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.util.stream.Stream;
public class ReadFile_Files_Lines {
public static void main(String[] pArgs) throws IOException {
String fileName = "c:\\temp\\sample-10KB.txt";
File file = new File(fileName);
try (Stream linesStream = Files.lines(file.toPath())) {
linesStream.forEach(line -> {
System.out.println(line);
});
}
}
}

What do you want to do with the text? Is the file small enough to fit into memory? I would try to find the simplest way to handle the file for your needs. The FileUtils library is very handle for this.
for(String line: FileUtils.readLines("my-text-file"))
System.out.println(line);

Below is a one-liner of doing it in the Java 8 way. Assuming text.txt file is in the root of the project directory of the Eclipse.
Files.lines(Paths.get("text.txt")).collect(Collectors.toList());

The most intuitive method is introduced in Java 11 Files.readString
import java.io.*;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
public class App {
public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException {
String content = Files.readString(Paths.get("D:\\sandbox\\mvn\\my-app\\my-app.iml"));
System.out.print(content);
}
}
PHP has this luxury for decades! ☺

The buffered stream classes are much more performant in practice, so much so that the NIO.2 API includes methods that specifically return these stream classes, in part to encourage you always to use buffered streams in your application.
Here is an example:
Path path = Paths.get("/myfolder/myfile.ext");
try (BufferedReader reader = Files.newBufferedReader(path)) {
// Read from the stream
String currentLine = null;
while ((currentLine = reader.readLine()) != null)
//do your code here
} catch (IOException e) {
// Handle file I/O exception...
}
You can replace this code
BufferedReader reader = Files.newBufferedReader(path);
with
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("/myfolder/myfile.ext"));
I recommend this article to learn the main uses of Java NIO and IO.

Using BufferedReader:
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.IOException;
BufferedReader br;
try {
br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("/fileToRead.txt"));
try {
String x;
while ( (x = br.readLine()) != null ) {
// Printing out each line in the file
System.out.println(x);
}
}
catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
System.out.println(e);
e.printStackTrace();
}

This is basically the exact same as Jesus Ramos' answer, except with File instead of FileReader plus iteration to step through the contents of the file.
Scanner in = new Scanner(new File("filename.txt"));
while (in.hasNext()) { // Iterates each line in the file
String line = in.nextLine();
// Do something with line
}
in.close(); // Don't forget to close resource leaks
... throws FileNotFoundException

Probably not as fast as with buffered I/O, but quite terse:
String content;
try (Scanner scanner = new Scanner(textFile).useDelimiter("\\Z")) {
content = scanner.next();
}
The \Z pattern tells the Scanner that the delimiter is EOF.

The most simple way to read data from a file in Java is making use of the File class to read the file and the Scanner class to read the content of the file.
public static void main(String args[])throws Exception
{
File f = new File("input.txt");
takeInputIn2DArray(f);
}
public static void takeInputIn2DArray(File f) throws Exception
{
Scanner s = new Scanner(f);
int a[][] = new int[20][20];
for(int i=0; i<20; i++)
{
for(int j=0; j<20; j++)
{
a[i][j] = s.nextInt();
}
}
}
PS: Don't forget to import java.util.*; for Scanner to work.

You can use readAllLines and the join method to get whole file content in one line:
String str = String.join("\n",Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("e:\\text.txt")));
It uses UTF-8 encoding by default, which reads ASCII data correctly.
Also you can use readAllBytes:
String str = new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get("e:\\text.txt")), StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
I think readAllBytes is faster and more precise, because it does not replace new line with \n and also new line may be \r\n. It is depending on your needs which one is suitable.

I don't see it mentioned yet in the other answers so far. But if "Best" means speed, then the new Java I/O (NIO) might provide the fastest preformance, but not always the easiest to figure out for someone learning.
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/io/file.html

Guava provides a one-liner for this:
import com.google.common.base.Charsets;
import com.google.common.io.Files;
String contents = Files.toString(filePath, Charsets.UTF_8);

Cactoos give you a declarative one-liner:
new TextOf(new File("a.txt")).asString();

This might not be the exact answer to the question. It's just another way of reading a file where you do not explicitly specify the path to your file in your Java code and instead, you read it as a command-line argument.
With the following code,
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.IOException;
public class InputReader{
public static void main(String[] args)throws IOException{
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
String s="";
while((s=br.readLine())!=null){
System.out.println(s);
}
}
}
just go ahead and run it with:
java InputReader < input.txt
This would read the contents of the input.txt and print it to the your console.
You can also make your System.out.println() to write to a specific file through the command line as follows:
java InputReader < input.txt > output.txt
This would read from input.txt and write to output.txt.

For JSF-based Maven web applications, just use ClassLoader and the Resources folder to read in any file you want:
Put any file you want to read in the Resources folder.
Put the Apache Commons IO dependency into your POM:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
<version>1.3.2</version>
</dependency>
Use the code below to read it (e.g. below is reading in a .json file):
String metadata = null;
FileInputStream inputStream;
try {
ClassLoader loader = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader();
inputStream = (FileInputStream) loader
.getResourceAsStream("/metadata.json");
metadata = IOUtils.toString(inputStream);
inputStream.close();
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
return metadata;
You can do the same for text files, .properties files, XSD schemas, etc.

try {
File f = new File("filename.txt");
Scanner r = new Scanner(f);
while (r.hasNextLine()) {
String data = r.nextLine();
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(data);
}
r.close();
} catch (FileNotFoundException ex) {
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog("Error occurred");
ex.printStackTrace();
}

Use Java kiss if this is about simplicity of structure:
import static kiss.API.*;
class App {
void run() {
String line;
try (Close in = inOpen("file.dat")) {
while ((line = readLine()) != null) {
println(line);
}
}
}
}

import java.util.stream.Stream;
import java.nio.file.*;
import java.io.*;
class ReadFile {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String filename = "Test.txt";
try(Stream<String> stream = Files.lines(Paths.get(filename))) {
stream.forEach(System.out:: println);
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
Just use java 8 Stream.

In case you have a large file you can use Apache Commons IO to process the file iteratively without exhausting the available memory.
try (LineIterator it = FileUtils.lineIterator(theFile, "UTF-8")) {
while (it.hasNext()) {
String line = it.nextLine();
// do something with line
}
}

try (Stream<String> stream = Files.lines(Paths.get(String.valueOf(new File("yourFile.txt"))))) {
stream.forEach(System.out::println);
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
new File(<path_name>)
Creates a new File instance by converting the given pathname string into an abstract pathname. If the given string is the empty string, then the result is the empty abstract pathname.
Params:
pathname – A pathname string
Throws:
NullPointerException – If the pathname argument is null
Files.lines returns a stream of String
Stream<String> stream = Files.lines(Paths.get(String.valueOf(new File("yourFile.txt"))))
can throw nullPointerExcetion , FileNotFoundException so, keepint it inside try will take care of Exception in runtime
stream.forEach(System.out::println);
This is used to iterate over the stream and print in console
If you have different use case you can provide your custome function to manipulate the stream of lines

My new favorite approach to simply read a whole text file from a BufferedReader input goes:
String text = input.lines().collect(Collectors.joining(System.lineSeparator())));
This will read the whole file by adding new line (lineSeparator) behind each line. Without the separator it would join all lines together as one.
This appears to have existed since Java 8.

For Android developers ending up here (who use Kotlin):
val myFileUrl = object{}.javaClass.getResource("/vegetables.txt")
val text = myFileUrl.readText() // Not recommended for huge files
println(text)
Other solution:
val myFileUrl = object{}.javaClass.getResource("/vegetables.txt")
val file = File(myFileUrl.toURI())
val lines = file.readLines() // Not recommended for huge files
lines.forEach(::println)
Another good solution which can be used for huge files as well:
val myFileUrl = object{}.javaClass.getResource("/vegetables.txt")
val file = File(myFileUrl.toURI())
file
.bufferedReader()
.lineSequence()
.forEach(::println)
Or:
val myFileUrl = object{}.javaClass.getResource("/vegetables.txt")
val file = File(myFileUrl.toURI())
file.useLines { lines ->
lines.forEach(::println)
}
Notes:
The vegetables.txt file should be in your classpath (for example, in src/main/resources directory)
The above solutions all treat the file encodings as UTF-8 by default. You can specify your desired encoding as the argument for the functions.
The above solutions do not need any further action like closing the files or readers. They are automatically taken care of by the Kotlin standard library.

Java's RandomAccessFIle EOFException

Main:
package main;
import racreader.RAFReader;
public class RandomAccessFile {
public static void main(String[] args) {
if (args.length != 2) {
System.err.println("Wrong arguments length");
System.exit(1);
}
try {
RAFReader reader = new RAFReader (args[0]);
try {
String output = reader.readUTF(Integer.parseInt(args[1]));
System.out.print(output);
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println(e.toString());
} finally {
reader.close();
}
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println(e.toString());
}
}
}
RAFReader:
package racreader;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.RandomAccessFile;
public class RAFReader {
private final String fileName;
private final RandomAccessFile reader;
public RAFReader(String fileName) throws FileNotFoundException {
this.fileName = fileName;
this.reader = openFile();
}
private RandomAccessFile openFile() throws FileNotFoundException {
RandomAccessFile reader = new RandomAccessFile(fileName, "r");
return reader;
}
public String readUTF(int offset) throws IOException {
reader.seek(offset);
String output = reader.readUTF();
return output;
}
public void close() throws IOException {
reader.close();
}
}
The problem is in EOFException in every file (even encoded in UTF8) and every offset. Why?
UPD: I try to get my program working with file with this content:
Это тест UTF-8 чтения
It works fine only if offset = 0. Any other offset throws EOFException.

The readUTF()/writeUTF() methods from RandomAccesFile use conventions for writing Java String objects, which are not necessarily honored by UTF encoded text files. readUTF() was not meant to be used for reading arbitrary text file, which was not originally written by using RandomAccesFile.writeUTF().
As method Javadocs specify, readUTF() assumes that the first two bytes it reads contain the number of bytes in the following string. This is the case if the string was written to file by the pairing writeUTF() method, but in case of the text file this will throw intermittent EOFException, since the first two bytes will contain actual characters from the string.
In your case, a different set of classes can solve the problem. Consider rewriting RAFReader class using InputStreamReader:
public String readUTF(int offset) throws IOException {
FileInputStream is = new FileInputStream(fileName);
Reader fileReader = new InputStreamReader(is, "UTF-8");
StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
fileReader.skip(offset);
int charsRead;
char buf[] = new char[256];
//Read until there is no more characters to read.
while ((charsRead = fileReader.read(buf)) > 0) {
stringBuilder.append(buf, 0, charsRead);
}
fileReader.close();
return stringBuilder.toString();
}
If using RandomAccesFile is a must, you can use input stream which wraps the RandomAccesFile. The simplest way to do it is through FileChannel, encapsulated by RandomAccesFile:
InputStream is = Channels.newInputStream(reader.getChannel());

EOFException - if this file reaches the end before reading all the
bytes.
One possible way in which you got EOFException is at line
reader.seek(offset);
String output = reader.readUTF();
Maybe the offset value is high for file length. Try with offset = 0 and check if you get EOF or not.

Java Fastest way to read through text file with 2 million lines

Currently I am using scanner/filereader and using while hasnextline. I think this method is not highly efficient. Is there any other method to read file with the similar functionality of this?
public void Read(String file) {
Scanner sc = null;
try {
sc = new Scanner(new FileReader(file));
while (sc.hasNextLine()) {
String text = sc.nextLine();
String[] file_Array = text.split(" ", 3);
if (file_Array[0].equalsIgnoreCase("case")) {
//do something
} else if (file_Array[0].equalsIgnoreCase("object")) {
//do something
} else if (file_Array[0].equalsIgnoreCase("classes")) {
//do something
} else if (file_Array[0].equalsIgnoreCase("function")) {
//do something
}
else if (file_Array[0].equalsIgnoreCase("ignore")) {
//do something
}
else if (file_Array[0].equalsIgnoreCase("display")) {
//do something
}
}
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
System.out.println("Input file " + file + " not found");
System.exit(1);
} finally {
sc.close();
}
}

You will find that BufferedReader.readLine() is as fast as you need: you can read millions of lines a second with it. It is more probable that your string splitting and handling is causing whatever performance problems you are encountering.

I made a gist comparing different methods:
import java.io.*;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Scanner;
import java.util.function.Function;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String path = "resources/testfile.txt";
measureTime("BufferedReader.readLine() into LinkedList", Main::bufferReaderToLinkedList, path);
measureTime("BufferedReader.readLine() into ArrayList", Main::bufferReaderToArrayList, path);
measureTime("Files.readAllLines()", Main::readAllLines, path);
measureTime("Scanner.nextLine() into ArrayList", Main::scannerArrayList, path);
measureTime("Scanner.nextLine() into LinkedList", Main::scannerLinkedList, path);
measureTime("RandomAccessFile.readLine() into ArrayList", Main::randomAccessFileArrayList, path);
measureTime("RandomAccessFile.readLine() into LinkedList", Main::randomAccessFileLinkedList, path);
System.out.println("-----------------------------------------------------------");
}
private static void measureTime(String name, Function<String, List<String>> fn, String path) {
System.out.println("-----------------------------------------------------------");
System.out.println("run: " + name);
long startTime = System.nanoTime();
List<String> l = fn.apply(path);
long estimatedTime = System.nanoTime() - startTime;
System.out.println("lines: " + l.size());
System.out.println("estimatedTime: " + estimatedTime / 1_000_000_000.);
}
private static List<String> bufferReaderToLinkedList(String path) {
return bufferReaderToList(path, new LinkedList<>());
}
private static List<String> bufferReaderToArrayList(String path) {
return bufferReaderToList(path, new ArrayList<>());
}
private static List<String> bufferReaderToList(String path, List<String> list) {
try {
final BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(path), StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
String line;
while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
list.add(line);
}
in.close();
} catch (final IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return list;
}
private static List<String> readAllLines(String path) {
try {
return Files.readAllLines(Paths.get(path));
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return null;
}
private static List<String> randomAccessFileLinkedList(String path) {
return randomAccessFile(path, new LinkedList<>());
}
private static List<String> randomAccessFileArrayList(String path) {
return randomAccessFile(path, new ArrayList<>());
}
private static List<String> randomAccessFile(String path, List<String> list) {
try {
RandomAccessFile file = new RandomAccessFile(path, "r");
String str;
while ((str = file.readLine()) != null) {
list.add(str);
}
file.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return list;
}
private static List<String> scannerLinkedList(String path) {
return scanner(path, new LinkedList<>());
}
private static List<String> scannerArrayList(String path) {
return scanner(path, new ArrayList<>());
}
private static List<String> scanner(String path, List<String> list) {
try {
Scanner scanner = new Scanner(new File(path));
while (scanner.hasNextLine()) {
list.add(scanner.nextLine());
}
scanner.close();
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return list;
}
}
run: BufferedReader.readLine() into LinkedList,
lines: 1000000,
estimatedTime: 0.105118655
run: BufferedReader.readLine() into ArrayList,
lines: 1000000,
estimatedTime: 0.072696934
run: Files.readAllLines(),
lines: 1000000,
estimatedTime: 0.087753316
run: Scanner.nextLine() into ArrayList,
lines: 1000000,
estimatedTime: 0.743121734
run: Scanner.nextLine() into LinkedList,
lines: 1000000,
estimatedTime: 0.867049885
run: RandomAccessFile.readLine() into ArrayList,
lines: 1000000,
estimatedTime: 11.413323046
run: RandomAccessFile.readLine() into LinkedList,
lines: 1000000,
estimatedTime: 11.423862897
BufferedReader is the fastest, Files.readAllLines() is also acceptable, Scanner is slow due to regex, RandomAccessFile is inacceptable

Scanner can't be as fast as BufferedReader, as it uses regular expressions for reading text files, which makes it slower compared to BufferedReader. By using BufferedReader you can read a block from a text file.
BufferedReader bf = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("FileName"));
you can next use readLine() to read from bf.
Hope it serves your purpose.

you can use FileChannel and ByteBuffer from JAVA NIO. ByteBuffer size is the most critical part in reading data faster what i have observed.
Below code will read the content of the file.
static public void main( String args[] ) throws Exception
{
FileInputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream(
new File("sample4.txt"));
FileChannel fileChannel = fileInputStream.getChannel();
ByteBuffer byteBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(1024);
fileChannel.read(byteBuffer);
byteBuffer.flip();
int limit = byteBuffer.limit();
while(limit>0)
{
System.out.print((char)byteBuffer.get());
limit--;
}
fileChannel.close();
}
You can check for '\n' for new line here. Thanks.
Even you can scatter and getter way to read files faster i.e.
fileChannel.get(buffers);
where
ByteBuffer b1 = ByteBuffer.allocate(B1);
ByteBuffer b2 = ByteBuffer.allocate(B2);
ByteBuffer b3 = ByteBuffer.allocate(B3);
ByteBuffer[] buffers = {b1, b2, b3};
This saves the user process to from making several system calls (which can be expensive) and allows kernel to optimize handling of the data because it has information about the total transfer, If multiple CPUs available it may even be possible to fill and drain several buffers simultaneously.
From this book.

Use BufferedReader for high performance file access. But the default buffer size of 8192 bytes is often too small. For huge files you can increase the buffer size by orders of magnitudes to boost your file reading performance. For example:
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader("file.dat", 1000 * 8192);
while ((thisLine = br.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(thisLine);
}

just updating this thread, now we have java 8 to do this job:
List<String> lines = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get(file_path);

You must investigate which part of program is taking time.
As per answer of EJP, you should use BufferedReader.
If really string processing is taking time, then you should consider using threads, one thread will read from file and queues lines. Other string processor threads will dequeue lines and process them. You will need to investigate how many threads to use, the number of threads you should use in application has to be related with number of cores in CPU, in that way will use full CPU.

You can read the file in chunks if there are millions of records. That will avoid potential memory issue. You need to keep last pointer to calculate offset of file.
try (FileReader reader = new FileReader(filePath);
BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(reader);) {
int pageOffset = lastOffset + counter;
int skipRecords = (pageOffset - 1) * batchSize;
bufferedReader.lines().skip(skipRecords).forEach(cline -> {
try {
// PRINT
}

If you wish to read all lines together then you should have a look at the Files API of java 7. Its really simple to use.
But a better approach would be to process this file in a batch. Have a reader which reads chunks of lines from the file and a writer which does the required processing or persists the data. Having abatch will ensure that it will work even if the lines increase to billion in future. Also you can have a batch which uses a multithreading to increase theoverall performance of the batch. I would recpmmend that you have a look at spring batch.

How to read a file into string in java?

I have read a file into a String. The file contains various names, one name per line. Now the problem is that I want those names in a String array.
For that I have written the following code:
String [] names = fileString.split("\n"); // fileString is the string representation of the file
But I am not getting the desired results and the array obtained after splitting the string is of length 1. It means that the "fileString" doesn't have "\n" character but the file has this "\n" character.
So How to get around this problem?

What about using Apache Commons (Commons IO and Commons Lang)?
String[] lines = StringUtils.split(FileUtils.readFileToString(new File("...")), '\n');

The problem is not with how you're splitting the string; that bit is correct.
You have to review how you are reading the file to the string. You need something like this:
private String readFileAsString(String filePath) throws IOException {
StringBuffer fileData = new StringBuffer();
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
new FileReader(filePath));
char[] buf = new char[1024];
int numRead=0;
while((numRead=reader.read(buf)) != -1){
String readData = String.valueOf(buf, 0, numRead);
fileData.append(readData);
}
reader.close();
return fileData.toString();
}

Particularly i love this one using the java.nio.file package also described here.
You can optionally include the Charset as a second argument in the String constructor.
String content = new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get("/path/to/file")));
Cool huhhh!

As suggested by Garrett Rowe and Stan James you can use java.util.Scanner:
try (Scanner s = new Scanner(file).useDelimiter("\\Z")) {
String contents = s.next();
}
or
try (Scanner s = new Scanner(file).useDelimiter("\\n")) {
while(s.hasNext()) {
String line = s.next();
}
}
This code does not have external dependencies.
WARNING: you should specify the charset encoding as the second parameter of the Scanner's constructor. In this example I am using the platform's default, but this is most certainly wrong.
Here is an example of how to use java.util.Scanner with correct resource and error handling:
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.util.Scanner;
import java.util.Iterator;
class TestScanner {
public static void main(String[] args)
throws FileNotFoundException {
File file = new File(args[0]);
System.out.println(getFileContents(file));
processFileLines(file, new LineProcessor() {
#Override
public void process(int lineNumber, String lineContents) {
System.out.println(lineNumber + ": " + lineContents);
}
});
}
static String getFileContents(File file)
throws FileNotFoundException {
try (Scanner s = new Scanner(file).useDelimiter("\\Z")) {
return s.next();
}
}
static void processFileLines(File file, LineProcessor lineProcessor)
throws FileNotFoundException {
try (Scanner s = new Scanner(file).useDelimiter("\\n")) {
for (int lineNumber = 1; s.hasNext(); ++lineNumber) {
lineProcessor.process(lineNumber, s.next());
}
}
}
static interface LineProcessor {
void process(int lineNumber, String lineContents);
}
}

You could read your file into a List instead of a String and then convert to an array:
//Setup a BufferedReader here
List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
String line = reader.readLine();
while (line != null) {
list.add(line);
line = reader.readLine();
}
String[] arr = list.toArray(new String[0]);

There is no built-in method in Java which can read an entire file. So you have the following options:
Use a non-standard library method, such as Apache Commons, see the code example in romaintaz's answer.
Loop around some read method (e.g. FileInputStream.read, which reads bytes, or FileReader.read, which reads chars; both read to a preallocated array). Both classes use system calls, so you'll have to speed them up with bufering (BufferedInputStream or BufferedReader) if you are reading just a small amount of data (say, less than 4096 bytes) at a time.
Loop around BufferedReader.readLine. There has a fundamental problem that it discards the information whether there was a '\n' at the end of the file -- so e.g. it is unable to distinguish an empty file from a file containing just a newline.
I'd use this code:
// charsetName can be null to use the default charset.
public static String readFileAsString(String fileName, String charsetName)
throws java.io.IOException {
java.io.InputStream is = new java.io.FileInputStream(fileName);
try {
final int bufsize = 4096;
int available = is.available();
byte[] data = new byte[available < bufsize ? bufsize : available];
int used = 0;
while (true) {
if (data.length - used < bufsize) {
byte[] newData = new byte[data.length << 1];
System.arraycopy(data, 0, newData, 0, used);
data = newData;
}
int got = is.read(data, used, data.length - used);
if (got <= 0) break;
used += got;
}
return charsetName != null ? new String(data, 0, used, charsetName)
: new String(data, 0, used);
} finally {
is.close();
}
}
The code above has the following advantages:
It's correct: it reads the whole file, not discarding any byte.
It lets you specify the character set (encoding) the file uses.
It's fast (no matter how many newlines the file contains).
It doesn't waste memory (no matter how many newlines the file contains).

FileReader fr=new FileReader(filename);
BufferedReader br=new BufferedReader(fr);
String strline;
String arr[]=new String[10];//10 is the no. of strings
while((strline=br.readLine())!=null)
{
arr[i++]=strline;
}

The simplest solution for reading a text file line by line and putting the results into an array of strings without using third party libraries would be this:
ArrayList<String> names = new ArrayList<String>();
Scanner scanner = new Scanner(new File("names.txt"));
while(scanner.hasNextLine()) {
names.add(scanner.nextLine());
}
scanner.close();
String[] namesArr = (String[]) names.toArray();

I always use this way:
String content = "";
String line;
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(...));
while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null)
{
content += "\n" + line;
}
// Cut of the first newline;
content = content.substring(1);
// Close the reader
reader.close();

You can also use java.nio.file.Files to read an entire file into a String List then you can convert it to an array etc. Assuming a String variable named filePath, the following 2 lines will do that:
List<String> strList = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get(filePath), Charset.defaultCharset());
String[] strarray = strList.toArray(new String[0]);

A simpler (without loops), but less correct way, is to read everything to a byte array:
FileInputStream is = new FileInputStream(file);
byte[] b = new byte[(int) file.length()];
is.read(b, 0, (int) file.length());
String contents = new String(b);
Also note that this has serious performance issues.

If you have only InputStream, you can use InputStreamReader.
SmbFileInputStream in = new SmbFileInputStream("smb://host/dir/file.ext");
InputStreamReader r=new InputStreamReader(in);
char buf[] = new char[5000];
int count=r.read(buf);
String s=String.valueOf(buf, 0, count);
You can add cycle and StringBuffer if needed.

You can try Cactoos:
import org.cactoos.io.TextOf;
import java.io.File;
new TextOf(new File("a.txt")).asString().split("\n")

Fixed Version of #Anoyz's answer:
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.File;
public class App {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
File f = new File("file.txt");
long fileSize = f.length();
String file = "test.txt";
FileInputStream is = new FileInputStream("file.txt");
byte[] b = new byte[(int) f.length()];
is.read(b, 0, (int) f.length());
String contents = new String(b);
}
}