CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javatext-processingbufferedreader
S_Wheelan
S_Wheelan

Reputation: 267

BufferedReader: read multiple lines into a single string

I'm reading numbers from a txt file using BufferedReader for analysis. The way I'm going about this now is- reading a line using .readline, splitting this string into an array of strings using .split

public InputFile () {
    fileIn = null;

    //stuff here

    fileIn = new FileReader((filename + ".txt"));
    buffIn = new BufferedReader(fileIn);


    return;
    //stuff here
}

public String ReadBigStringIn() {
    String line = null;

    try { line = buffIn.readLine(); }
    catch(IOException e){};

    return line;
}

public ProcessMain() {
    initComponents();
    String[] stringArray;
    String line;

    try {
        InputFile stringIn = new InputFile();
        line = stringIn.ReadBigStringIn();
        stringArray = line.split("[^0-9.+Ee-]+"); 
        // analysis etc.
    }
}

This works fine, but what if the txt file has multiple lines of text? Is there a way to output a single long string, or perhaps another way of doing it? Maybe use while(buffIn.readline != null) {}? Not sure how to implement this.

Ideas appreciated, thanks.

Upvotes: 22

Views: 75287

Answers (7)

Paŭlo Ebermann
Paŭlo Ebermann

Reputation: 74750

You are right, a loop would be needed here.

The usual idiom (using only plain Java) is something like this:

public String ReadBigStringIn(BufferedReader buffIn) throws IOException {
    StringBuilder everything = new StringBuilder();
    String line;
    while( (line = buffIn.readLine()) != null) {
       everything.append(line);
    }
    return everything.toString();
}

This removes the line breaks - if you want to retain them, don't use the readLine() method, but simply read into a char[] instead (and append this to your StringBuilder).

Please note that this loop will run until the stream ends (and will block if it doesn't end), so if you need a different condition to finish the loop, implement it in there.

Upvotes: 37

Grzegorz Gajos
Grzegorz Gajos

Reputation: 2363

I would strongly advice using library here but since Java 8 you can do this also using streams.

    try (InputStreamReader in = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
         BufferedReader buffer = new BufferedReader(in)) {
        final String fileAsText = buffer.lines().collect(Collectors.joining());
        System.out.println(fileAsText);
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

You can notice also that it is pretty effective as joining is using StringBuilder internally.

Upvotes: 7

Jon Skeet
Jon Skeet

Reputation: 1499770

If you just want to read the entirety of a file into a string, I suggest you use Guava's Files class:

String text = Files.toString("filename.txt", Charsets.UTF_8);

Of course, that's assuming you want to maintain the linebreaks. If you want to remove the linebreaks, you could either load it that way and then use String.replace, or you could use Guava again:

List<String> lines = Files.readLines(new File("filename.txt"), Charsets.UTF_8);
String joined = Joiner.on("").join(lines);

Upvotes: 2

m.genova
m.genova

Reputation: 377

This creates a long string, every line is seprateted from string " " (one space):

public String ReadBigStringIn() {
    StringBuffer line = new StringBuffer();


    try { 
        while(buffIn.ready()) {
        line.append(" " + buffIn.readLine());
    } catch(IOException e){
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    return line.toString();
}

Upvotes: 0

ewan.chalmers
ewan.chalmers

Reputation: 16235

You have a file containing doubles. Looks like you have more than one number per line, and may have multiple lines.

Simplest thing to do is read lines in a while loop.

You could return null from your ReadBigStringIn method when last line is reached and terminate your loop there.

But more normal would be to create and use the reader in one method. Perhaps you could change to a method which reads the file and returns an array or list of doubles.

BTW, could you simply split your strings by whitespace?

Reading a whole file into a single String may suit your particular case, but be aware that it could cause a memory explosion if your file was very large. Streaming approach is generally safer for such i/o.

Upvotes: 0

Gnat
Gnat

Reputation: 2921

If you create a StringBuilder, then you can append every line to it, and return the String using toString() at the end.

You can replace your ReadBigStringIn() with

public String ReadBigStringIn() {
        StringBuilder b = new StringBuilder();

        try {
            String line = buffIn.readLine();
            while (line != null) {
                b.append(line);
                line = buffIn.readLine();
            }
        }
        catch(IOException e){};

        return b.toString();
}

Upvotes: 0

Peter Lawrey
Peter Lawrey

Reputation: 533432

Sounds like you want Apache IO FileUtils

String text = FileUtils.readStringFromFile(new File(filename + ".txt"));
String[] stringArray = text.split("[^0-9.+Ee-]+");

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions