Sorting an Array with .txt - java

Quick enquiry..
I have created an array and it will be populated by a scanner passing reading through information from a .txt file. The .txt file has a specific structure:
<job role> <years of experience> <name>
( this is an example ). This will be inputted by more than one person so there will be multiple of these in the text file. So, I now need to find a way to gather them into an array into an ordered structure. The order should be based on the first alphabetic letter of their job role. I was
thinking about implementing a comparator would this be possible/efficient to do?
So my idea would be use a comparator somehow on specifically and compare them will all other job role entries..
thanks and sorry if it's a brief or not very clear found it difficult describing the situation...

In order to accurately read in the text file, you would need a delimiter. A delimiter is a character that tells the computer that you are moving to the next data entry.
I recommend the following: for a new person, I recommend a new line \n as the delimiter. To tell the difference in the objects job, years, and name, I recommend using a comma, ",", as it does not appear that the the data set requires the use of that.
Once you have decided on a delimiter, I would recommend looking into the class File, FileInputStream and FileOutputStream. These classes are data streams that can read information from files saved on the computer.

Related

How do you read in a text file in Java and store it in a String array. It is inputted as a command line argument?

I am building a sorting program for a class, and this whole week I've been stuck on how to read in the text file. The text file will be specified as a command argument on command line, and it will consist of hospital records. it will be 4 pieces of data separated by comma on each line. it will be someones last, and first name, room number, and age. I have to read in this data somehow line by line. number for peoples records aren't specified. I know how to sort them, I just havent been able to figure out how to read in the data.
this is an example of what it looks like.
Costanza,George,122,53
Poppins,Mary,123,72
You could read in the file line by line, splitting the line at the commas, storing the split string in an array, and setting fields accordingly. Do you have a class for the patient?
Here is an example that uses similar methods that may be applicable to your situation.
while(in.hasNextLine()){
line = in.nextLine();
studentTraits = line.split(" \\| ");
...}
//studentTraits is an array with 5 indexes, and
//each line of the file has 5 sections separated by the pipe character
Hope this helps. Next time you ask a question, it will be much more helpful if you asked a much more specific question. Here, you did not exactly ask a question, you just pretty much asked for someone to write some code for you, and it doesn't look like you put any effort into solving the problem for yourself. Please show what you know, and ask about what you are stuck on.

Best way to store words for given scenerio

I am working on Java project [Maven].
I am confused in one point. I don't know what is logiclaly corect.
Problem is as follows :-
Sentence is given, and from their I have extract some particular words.
Solution that I found
I make one regex and put in Constants class. Whenever I have to add more words, I simply appended words in regex.
This solves the problem.
I am confused here
I am thinking, if I put numbers of text files in resources folder where each text file denotes one regex expression.
REGEX = (?:A|B|C|D)
A, B, C, D = Word(String)
Is it a good idea ? If not please suggest any other.
Why would you save regex's in a text file? The fact that you're using a regex seems like an implementation detail that you would want to encapsulate (unless you want the significantly greater functionality but also overhead of supporting regexes).
Also, why do you need new files for each word? That seems like you could just have one file with a word per line that is all of the words you're interested in. This would be much more simple for a user to understand than 100 files with one regex per file.
As my understanding, you want to find some key words from the input string. And those key words could be extened according your requirments.
your current solution is to make this regex (?:A|B|C|D) in your Constant class, wheneveer it's required, you'll add more key words in this regex.
If my understanding is not wrong, maybe, one suggestion is to put this regex in your properties file, like this
REGEX = (?:city|Animal|plant|student)
if too long, it's could be like this
REGEX = (?:city|Animal|plant|student|car|computer|clothes|\
furnature|others)
Your second idea, if my understanding is not wrong, is to put the keywords as the file name, and those files are put in one resource folder. therefore, you could obtain those files name to compose the final regexp. If your regex are always fixed as the (?:A|B|C|D) format, then this solution is good & convenient. (Every time, you add one new keyword file, you don't need to modify any source code & property file)

Can't implement RegEx on .dat file

I have to read through a .dat file with restaurant names, addresses, ratings etc. and display anything that isn't formatted correctly. The problem is not with the regular expression.
My problem is that I have no idea how to implement the regular expression so that it can read through the files and pick out any errors in the formatting of the above categories.
The contents of the file are not evenly spaced out so I can't just make a constructor that reads each substring. Is there any way I can use regular expressions to pull out the information I need from the file? Any help will be appreciated.
If you already have a regular expression, you can just test every line and print it, if it does not match.

write strings to the bottom line of an textfile

i want to write strings to a textfile, everytime to the bottom of the file. And then if im searching for a certain string in the textfile and finds it, i want to replace that line with another.
I'm thinking this: Count rows in textfile and add +1 and then write the string i want to write to that index. But is it even possible to write to a certain linenumber in a textfile?
And how about to update a certain row to another string ?
thanks!
You do not want to do that: it is a recipe for disaster. If, during the original file modification, you fail to write to it, the original file will be corrupted.
Use a double write protocol, write the modified file to another file, and only if the write suceeds, rename that file to the original.
Provided your file is not too big, for some definition of "big", I'd recommend creating a List<String> for the destination file: read the original file line by line, add to that list; once the list processing is complete (your question is unclear what should really happen), write each String to the other file, flush and close, and if that succeeds, rename to the original.
If you want to append strings, the FileOutputStream does have an alternate constructor which you can set to true so you can open for appending.
If you'd like, say, to replace strings into a file without copying it, your best bet would be to rely in RandomAccessFile instead. However, if the line length is varying, this is unreliable. For fixed-length records, this should work as such:
Move to the offset
Write
You can also 'truncate' (via setLength), so if there's a trailing block you need to get rid, you could discard as such.
A Third Solution would be to rely in mmap. This requires on a Memory-Mapped Bytebuffer for the whole file. I'm not considering the whole feasibility of the solution (it works in plain C), but that actually 'looks' the more correct, if you consider both the Java Platform + the Operating System

Parsing of data structure in a plain text file

How would you parse in Java a structure, similar to this
\\Header (name)\\\
1JohnRide 2MarySwanson
1 password1
2 password2
\\\1 block of data name\\\
1.ABCD
2.FEGH
3.ZEY
\\\2-nd block of data name\\\
1. 123232aDDF dkfjd ksksd
2. dfdfsf dkfjd
....
etc
Suppose, it comes from a text buffer (plain file).
Each line of text is "\n" - limited. Space is used between the words.
The structure is more or less defined. Ambuguity may sometimes be, though, case
number of fields in each line of information may be different, sometimes there may not
be some block of data, and the number of lines in each block may vary as well.
The question is how to do it most effectively?
First solution that comes to my head is to use regular expressions.
But are there other solutions? Problem-oriented? Maybe some java library already written?
Check out UTAH: https://github.com/sonalake/utah-parser
It's a tool that's pretty good at parsing this kind of semi structured text
As no one recommended any library, my suggestion would be : use REGEX.
From what you have posted it looks like the data is delimited by whitespace. One idea is to use a Scanner or a StringTokenizer to get one token at a time. You can then check the first char of a token to see if it is a digit (in which case the part of the token after the digit(s) will be the data, if there is any).
This sounds like a homework problem so I'm going to try to answer it in such a way to help guide you (not give the final solution).
First, you need to consider each object of data you're reading. Is it a number then a text field? A number then 3 text fields? Variable numbers and text fields?
After that you need to determine what you're going to use to delimit each field and each object. For example, in many files you'll see something like a semi-colon between the fields and a new line for the end of the object. From what you said it sounds like yours is different.
If an object can go across multiple lines you'll need to bear that in mind (don't stop partway through an object).
Hopefully that helps. If you research this and you're still having problems post the code you've got so far and some sample data and I'll help you to solve your problems (I'll teach you to fish....not give you fish :-) ).
If the fields are fixed length, you could use a DataInputStream to read your file. Or, since your format is line-based, you could use a BufferedReader to read lines and write yourself a state machine which knows what kind of line to expect next, given what it's already seen. Once you have each line as a string, then you just need to split the data appropriately.
E.g., the password can be gotten from your password line like this:
final int pos = line.indexOf(' ');
String passwd = line.substring(pos+1, line.length());

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