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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.
In Java, is there any method to read a particular line from a file? For example, read line 32 or any other line number.
For small files:
String line32 = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("file.txt")).get(32)
For large files:
try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(Paths.get("file.txt"))) {
line32 = lines.skip(31).findFirst().get();
}
Unless you have previous knowledge about the lines in the file, there's no way to directly access the 32nd line without reading the 31 previous lines.
That's true for all languages and all modern file systems.
So effectively you'll simply read lines until you've found the 32nd one.
Not that I know of, but what you could do is loop through the first 31 lines doing nothing using the readline() function of BufferedReader
FileInputStream fs= new FileInputStream("someFile.txt");
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fs));
for(int i = 0; i < 31; ++i)
br.readLine();
String lineIWant = br.readLine();
Joachim is right on, of course, and an alternate implementation to Chris' (for small files only because it loads the entire file) might be to use commons-io from Apache (though arguably you might not want to introduce a new dependency just for this, if you find it useful for other stuff too though, it could make sense).
For example:
String line32 = (String) FileUtils.readLines(file).get(31);
http://commons.apache.org/io/api-release/org/apache/commons/io/FileUtils.html#readLines(java.io.File, java.lang.String)
You may try indexed-file-reader (Apache License 2.0). The class IndexedFileReader has a method called readLines(int from, int to) which returns a SortedMap whose key is the line number and the value is the line that was read.
Example:
File file = new File("src/test/resources/file.txt");
reader = new IndexedFileReader(file);
lines = reader.readLines(6, 10);
assertNotNull("Null result.", lines);
assertEquals("Incorrect length.", 5, lines.size());
assertTrue("Incorrect value.", lines.get(6).startsWith("[6]"));
assertTrue("Incorrect value.", lines.get(7).startsWith("[7]"));
assertTrue("Incorrect value.", lines.get(8).startsWith("[8]"));
assertTrue("Incorrect value.", lines.get(9).startsWith("[9]"));
assertTrue("Incorrect value.", lines.get(10).startsWith("[10]"));
The above example reads a text file composed of 50 lines in the following format:
[1] The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog ODD
[2] The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog EVEN
Disclamer: I wrote this library
Although as said in other answers, it is not possible to get to the exact line without knowing the offset (pointer) before. So, I've achieved this by creating an temporary index file which would store the offset values of every line. If the file is small enough, you could just store the indexes (offset) in memory without needing a separate file for it.
The offsets can be calculated by using the RandomAccessFile
RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile("myFile.txt","r");
//above 'r' means open in read only mode
ArrayList<Integer> arrayList = new ArrayList<Integer>();
String cur_line = "";
while((cur_line=raf.readLine())!=null)
{
arrayList.add(raf.getFilePointer());
}
//Print the 32 line
//Seeks the file to the particular location from where our '32' line starts
raf.seek(raf.seek(arrayList.get(31));
System.out.println(raf.readLine());
raf.close();
Also visit the Java docs on RandomAccessFile for more information:
Complexity: This is O(n) as it reads the entire file once. Please be aware for the memory requirements. If it's too big to be in memory, then make a temporary file that stores the offsets instead of ArrayList as shown above.
Note: If all you want in '32' line, you just have to call the readLine() also available through other classes '32' times. The above approach is useful if you want to get the a specific line (based on line number of course) multiple times.
Another way.
try (BufferedReader reader = Files.newBufferedReader(
Paths.get("file.txt"), StandardCharsets.UTF_8)) {
List<String> line = reader.lines()
.skip(31)
.limit(1)
.collect(Collectors.toList());
line.stream().forEach(System.out::println);
}
No, unless in that file format the line lengths are pre-determined (e.g. all lines with a fixed length), you'll have to iterate line by line to count them.
In Java 8,
For small files:
String line = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("file.txt")).get(n);
For large files:
String line;
try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(Paths.get("file.txt"))) {
line = lines.skip(n).findFirst().get();
}
In Java 7
String line;
try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("file.txt"))) {
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
br.readLine();
line = br.readLine();
}
Source: Reading nth line from file
If you are talking about a text file, then there is really no way to do this without reading all the lines that precede it - After all, lines are determined by the presence of a newline, so it has to be read.
Use a stream that supports readline, and just read the first X-1 lines and dump the results, then process the next one.
It works for me:
I have combined the answer of
Reading a simple text file
But instead of return a String I am returning a LinkedList of Strings. Then I can select the line that I want.
public static LinkedList<String> readFromAssets(Context context, String filename) throws IOException {
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(context.getAssets().open(filename)));
LinkedList<String>linkedList = new LinkedList<>();
// do reading, usually loop until end of file reading
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
String mLine = reader.readLine();
while (mLine != null) {
linkedList.add(mLine);
sb.append(mLine); // process line
mLine = reader.readLine();
}
reader.close();
return linkedList;
}
Use this code:
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
public class FileWork
{
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
String line = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("D:/abc.txt")).get(1);
System.out.println(line);
}
}
You can use LineNumberReader instead of BufferedReader. Go through the api. You can find setLineNumber and getLineNumber methods.
You can also take a look at LineNumberReader, subclass of BufferedReader. Along with the readline method, it also has setter/getter methods to access line number. Very useful to keep track of the number of lines read, while reading data from file.
public String readLine(int line){
FileReader tempFileReader = null;
BufferedReader tempBufferedReader = null;
try { tempFileReader = new FileReader(textFile);
tempBufferedReader = new BufferedReader(tempFileReader);
} catch (Exception e) { }
String returnStr = "ERROR";
for(int i = 0; i < line - 1; i++){
try { tempBufferedReader.readLine(); } catch (Exception e) { }
}
try { returnStr = tempBufferedReader.readLine(); } catch (Exception e) { }
return returnStr;
}
you can use the skip() function to skip the lines from begining.
public static void readFile(String filePath, long lineNum) {
List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
long totalLines, startLine = 0;
try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(Paths.get(filePath))) {
totalLines = Files.lines(Paths.get(filePath)).count();
startLine = totalLines - lineNum;
// Stream<String> line32 = lines.skip(((startLine)+1));
list = lines.skip(startLine).collect(Collectors.toList());
// lines.forEach(list::add);
} catch (IOException e1) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e1.printStackTrace();
}
list.forEach(System.out::println);
}
EASY WAY - Reading a line using line number.
Let's say Line number starts from 1 till null .
public class TextFileAssignmentOct {
private void readData(int rowNum, BufferedReader br) throws IOException {
int n=1; //Line number starts from 1
String row;
while((row=br.readLine()) != null) { // Reads every line
if (n == rowNum) { // When Line number matches with which you want to read
System.out.println(row);
}
n++; //This increments Line number
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
File f = new File("../JavaPractice/FileRead.txt");
FileReader fr = new FileReader(f);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(fr);
TextFileAssignmentOct txf = new TextFileAssignmentOct();
txf.readData(4, br); //Read a Specific Line using Line number and Passing buffered reader
}
}
for a text file you can use an integer with a loop to help you get the number of the line, don't forget to import the classes we are using in this example
File myObj = new File("C:\\Users\\LENOVO\\Desktop\\test.txt");//path of the file
FileReader fr = new FileReader(myObj);
fr.read();
BufferedReader bf = new BufferedReader(fr); //BufferedReader of the FileReader fr
String line = bf.readLine();
int lineNumber = 0;
while (line != null) {
lineNumber = lineNumber + 1;
if(lineNumber == 7)
{
//show line
System.out.println("line: " + lineNumber + " has :" + line);
break;
}
//lecture de la prochaine ligne, reading next
line = bf.readLine();
}
They are all wrong I just wrote this in about 10 seconds.
With this I managed to just call the object.getQuestion("linenumber") in the main method to return whatever line I want.
public class Questions {
File file = new File("Question2Files/triviagame1.txt");
public Questions() {
}
public String getQuestion(int numLine) throws IOException {
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
String line = "";
for(int i = 0; i < numLine; i++) {
line = br.readLine();
}
return line; }}
Importing a large list of words and I need to create code that will recognize each word in the file. I am using a delimiter to recognize the separation from each word but I am receiving a suppressed error stating that the value of linenumber and delimiter are not used. What do I need to do to get the program to read this file and to separate each word within that file?
public class ASCIIPrime {
public final static String LOC = "C:\\english1.txt";
#SuppressWarnings("null")
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
//import list of words
#SuppressWarnings("resource")
BufferedReader File = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(LOC));
//Create a temporary ArrayList to store data
ArrayList<String> temp = new ArrayList<String>();
//Find number of lines in txt file
String line;
while ((line = File.readLine()) != null)
{
temp.add(line);
}
//Identify each word in file
int lineNumber = 0;
lineNumber++;
String delimiter = "\t";
//assess each character in the word to determine the ascii value
int total = 0;
for (int i=0; i < ((String) line).length(); i++)
{
char c = ((String) line).charAt(i);
total += c;
}
System.out.println ("The total value of " + line + " is " + total);
}
}
This smells like homework, but alright.
Importing a large list of words and I need to create code that will recognize each word in the file. What do I need to do to get the program to read this file and to separate each word within that file?
You need to...
Read the file
Separate the words from what you've read in
... I don't know what you want to do with them after that. I'll just dump them into a big list.
The contents of my main method would be...
BufferedReader File = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(LOC));//LOC is defined as class variable
//Create an ArrayList to store the words
List<String> words = new ArrayList<String>();
String line;
String delimiter = "\t";
while ((line = File.readLine()) != null)//read the file
{
String[] wordsInLine = line.split(delimiter);//separate the words
//delimiter could be a regex here, gotta watch out for that
for(int i=0, isize = wordsInLine.length(); i < isize; i++){
words.add(wordsInLine[i]);//put them in a list
}
}
You can use the split method of the String class
String[] split(String regex)
This will return an array of strings that you can handle directly of transform in to any other collection you might need.
I suggest also to remove the suppresswarning unless you are sure what you are doing. In most cases is better to remove the cause of the warning than supress the warning.
I used this great tutorial from thenewboston when I started off reading files: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RNYUKxAgmw
This video seems perfect for you. It covers how to save file words of data. And just add the string data to the ArrayList. Here's what your code should look like:
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
public class ReadFile {
static Scanner x;
static ArrayList<String> temp = new ArrayList<String>();
public static void main(String args[]){
openFile();
readFile();
closeFile();
}
public static void openFile(){
try(
x = new Scanner(new File("yourtextfile.txt");
}catch(Exception e){
System.out.println(e);
}
}
public static void readFile(){
while(x.hasNext()){
temp.add(x.next());
}
}
public void closeFile(){
x.close();
}
}
One thing that is nice with using the java util scanner is that is automatically skips the spaces between words making it easy to use and identify words.
this is my first question here so I hope I'm doing this right. I have a programming project that needs to read each line of a tab delimited text file and extract a string, double values, and int values. I'm trying to place these into separate arrays so that I can use them as parameters. This is what I have so far(aside from my methods):
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.util.Scanner;
public class LoanDriver {
public static void main(String[] args)
{
String[] stringData = new String[9];
Scanner strings = null;
try
{
FileReader read = new FileReader("amounts.txt");//Read text file.
strings = new Scanner(read);
String skip = strings.nextLine();//Skip the first line by storing it in an uncalled variable
strings.useDelimiter("\t *");//Tab delimited
}
catch (FileNotFoundException error)
{}
while (strings.hasNext())
{
String readLine = strings.next();
stringData = readLine.split("\t");
}
}}
If I try to get the [0] value, it skips all the way to the bottom of the file and returns that value, so it works to some extent, but not from the top like it should. Also, I can't incorporate arrays into it because I always get an error that String[] and String is a type mismatch.
Instead of using delimiter, try reading the file line by line using Scanner.nextLine and split each new line you read using String.split ("\t" as argument).
try {
FileReader read = new FileReader("amounts.txt");//Read text file.
strings = new Scanner(read);
String skip = strings.nextLine();//Skip the first line by storing it in an uncalled variable
}
catch (FileNotFoundException error) { }
String line;
while ((line = strings.nextLine()) != null) {
String[] parts = line.split("\t");
//...
}
You are getting the last value in the file when you grab stringData[0] because you overwrite stringData each time you go through the while loop. So the last value is the only one present in the array at the end. Try this instead:
List<String> values = new ArrayList<String>();
while (strings.hasNext()) {
values.add(strings.next());
}
stringData = values.toArray(new String[values.size()]);
I want to read a text file containing space separated values. Values are integers.
How can I read it and put it in an array list?
Here is an example of contents of the text file:
1 62 4 55 5 6 77
I want to have it in an arraylist as [1, 62, 4, 55, 5, 6, 77]. How can I do it in Java?
You can use Files#readAllLines() to get all lines of a text file into a List<String>.
for (String line : Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("/path/to/file.txt"))) {
// ...
}
Tutorial: Basic I/O > File I/O > Reading, Writing and Creating text files
You can use String#split() to split a String in parts based on a regular expression.
for (String part : line.split("\\s+")) {
// ...
}
Tutorial: Numbers and Strings > Strings > Manipulating Characters in a String
You can use Integer#valueOf() to convert a String into an Integer.
Integer i = Integer.valueOf(part);
Tutorial: Numbers and Strings > Strings > Converting between Numbers and Strings
You can use List#add() to add an element to a List.
numbers.add(i);
Tutorial: Interfaces > The List Interface
So, in a nutshell (assuming that the file doesn't have empty lines nor trailing/leading whitespace).
List<Integer> numbers = new ArrayList<>();
for (String line : Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("/path/to/file.txt"))) {
for (String part : line.split("\\s+")) {
Integer i = Integer.valueOf(part);
numbers.add(i);
}
}
If you happen to be at Java 8 already, then you can even use Stream API for this, starting with Files#lines().
List<Integer> numbers = Files.lines(Paths.get("/path/to/test.txt"))
.map(line -> line.split("\\s+")).flatMap(Arrays::stream)
.map(Integer::valueOf)
.collect(Collectors.toList());
Tutorial: Processing data with Java 8 streams
Java 1.5 introduced the Scanner class for handling input from file and streams.
It is used for getting integers from a file and would look something like this:
List<Integer> integers = new ArrayList<Integer>();
Scanner fileScanner = new Scanner(new File("c:\\file.txt"));
while (fileScanner.hasNextInt()){
integers.add(fileScanner.nextInt());
}
Check the API though. There are many more options for dealing with different types of input sources, differing delimiters, and differing data types.
This example code shows you how to read file in Java.
import java.io.*;
/**
* This example code shows you how to read file in Java
*
* IN MY CASE RAILWAY IS MY TEXT FILE WHICH I WANT TO DISPLAY YOU CHANGE WITH YOUR OWN
*/
public class ReadFileExample
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
System.out.println("Reading File from Java code");
//Name of the file
String fileName="RAILWAY.txt";
try{
//Create object of FileReader
FileReader inputFile = new FileReader(fileName);
//Instantiate the BufferedReader Class
BufferedReader bufferReader = new BufferedReader(inputFile);
//Variable to hold the one line data
String line;
// Read file line by line and print on the console
while ((line = bufferReader.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(line);
}
//Close the buffer reader
bufferReader.close();
}catch(Exception e){
System.out.println("Error while reading file line by line:" + e.getMessage());
}
}
}
Look at this example, and try to do your own:
import java.io.*;
public class ReadFile {
public static void main(String[] args){
String string = "";
String file = "textFile.txt";
// Reading
try{
InputStream ips = new FileInputStream(file);
InputStreamReader ipsr = new InputStreamReader(ips);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(ipsr);
String line;
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null){
System.out.println(line);
string += line + "\n";
}
br.close();
}
catch (Exception e){
System.out.println(e.toString());
}
// Writing
try {
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter (file);
BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter (fw);
PrintWriter fileOut = new PrintWriter (bw);
fileOut.println (string+"\n test of read and write !!");
fileOut.close();
System.out.println("the file " + file + " is created!");
}
catch (Exception e){
System.out.println(e.toString());
}
}
}
Just for fun, here's what I'd probably do in a real project, where I'm already using all my favourite libraries (in this case Guava, formerly known as Google Collections).
String text = Files.toString(new File("textfile.txt"), Charsets.UTF_8);
List<Integer> list = Lists.newArrayList();
for (String s : text.split("\\s")) {
list.add(Integer.valueOf(s));
}
Benefit: Not much own code to maintain (contrast with e.g. this). Edit: Although it is worth noting that in this case tschaible's Scanner solution doesn't have any more code!
Drawback: you obviously may not want to add new library dependencies just for this. (Then again, you'd be silly not to make use of Guava in your projects. ;-)
Use Apache Commons (IO and Lang) for simple/common things like this.
Imports:
import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
import org.apache.commons.lang3.ArrayUtils;
Code:
String contents = FileUtils.readFileToString(new File("path/to/your/file.txt"));
String[] array = ArrayUtils.toArray(contents.split(" "));
Done.
Using Java 7 to read files with NIO.2
Import these packages:
import java.nio.charset.Charset;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
This is the process to read a file:
Path file = Paths.get("C:\\Java\\file.txt");
if(Files.exists(file) && Files.isReadable(file)) {
try {
// File reader
BufferedReader reader = Files.newBufferedReader(file, Charset.defaultCharset());
String line;
// read each line
while((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(line);
// tokenize each number
StringTokenizer tokenizer = new StringTokenizer(line, " ");
while (tokenizer.hasMoreElements()) {
// parse each integer in file
int element = Integer.parseInt(tokenizer.nextToken());
}
}
reader.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
To read all lines of a file at once:
Path file = Paths.get("C:\\Java\\file.txt");
List<String> lines = Files.readAllLines(file, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
All the answers so far given involve reading the file line by line, taking the line in as a String, and then processing the String.
There is no question that this is the easiest approach to understand, and if the file is fairly short (say, tens of thousands of lines), it'll also be acceptable in terms of efficiency. But if the file is long, it's a very inefficient way to do it, for two reasons:
Every character gets processed twice, once in constructing the String, and once in processing it.
The garbage collector will not be your friend if there are lots of lines in the file. You're constructing a new String for each line, and then throwing it away when you move to the next line. The garbage collector will eventually have to dispose of all these String objects that you don't want any more. Someone's got to clean up after you.
If you care about speed, you are much better off reading a block of data and then processing it byte by byte rather than line by line. Every time you come to the end of a number, you add it to the List you're building.
It will come out something like this:
private List<Integer> readIntegers(File file) throws IOException {
List<Integer> result = new ArrayList<>();
RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile(file, "r");
byte buf[] = new byte[16 * 1024];
final FileChannel ch = raf.getChannel();
int fileLength = (int) ch.size();
final MappedByteBuffer mb = ch.map(FileChannel.MapMode.READ_ONLY, 0,
fileLength);
int acc = 0;
while (mb.hasRemaining()) {
int len = Math.min(mb.remaining(), buf.length);
mb.get(buf, 0, len);
for (int i = 0; i < len; i++)
if ((buf[i] >= 48) && (buf[i] <= 57))
acc = acc * 10 + buf[i] - 48;
else {
result.add(acc);
acc = 0;
}
}
ch.close();
raf.close();
return result;
}
The code above assumes that this is ASCII (though it could be easily tweaked for other encodings), and that anything that isn't a digit (in particular, a space or a newline) represents a boundary between digits. It also assumes that the file ends with a non-digit (in practice, that the last line ends with a newline), though, again, it could be tweaked to deal with the case where it doesn't.
It's much, much faster than any of the String-based approaches also given as answers to this question. There is a detailed investigation of a very similar issue in this question. You'll see there that there's the possibility of improving it still further if you want to go down the multi-threaded line.
read the file and then do whatever you want
java8
Files.lines(Paths.get("c://lines.txt")).collect(Collectors.toList());