Different ways of Reading a text file in Java

Difficulty Level : Medium
Last Updated : 06 Sep, 2018

There are multiple ways of writing and reading a text file. this is required while dealing with many applications.

There are several ways to read a plain text file in Java e.g. you can use FileReader, BufferedReader or Scanner to read a text file. Every utility provides something special e.g. BufferedReader provides buffering of data for fast reading, and Scanner provides parsing ability.

We can also use both BufferReader and Scanner to read a text file line by line in Java. Then Java SE 8 introduces another Stream class java.util.stream.Stream which provides a lazy and more efficient way to read a file

Note : Here usual practices of writing good code like flushing/closing streams, Exception-Handling etc, have been avoided for better understanding of codes by beginners as well

Here are some of the many ways of reading files:

Using BufferedReader: This method reads text from a character-input stream. It does buffering for efficient reading of characters, arrays, and lines.
The buffer size may be specified, or the default size may be used. The default is large enough for most purposes.

In general, each read request made of a Reader causes a corresponding read request to be made of the underlying character or byte stream. It is therefore advisable to wrap a BufferedReader around any Reader whose read() operations may be costly, such as FileReaders and InputStreamReaders. For example,

BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(Reader in, int size);

// Java Program to illustrate reading from FileReader 
// using BufferedReader 
import java.io.*; 
public class ReadFromFile2 
{ 
  public static void main(String[] args)throws Exception 
  { 
  // We need to provide file path as the parameter: 
  // double backquote is to avoid compiler interpret words 
  // like \test as \t (ie. as a escape sequence) 
  File file = new File("C:\\Users\\pankaj\\Desktop\\test.txt"); 
  
  BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file)); 
  
  String st; 
  while ((st = br.readLine()) != null) 
    System.out.println(st); 
  } 
} 

Using FileReader class: Convenience class for reading character files. The constructors of this class assume that the default character encoding and the default byte-buffer size are appropriate.
Constructors defined in this class are:

// Creates a new FileReader, given the
// File to read from.
FileReader(File file)

// Creates a new FileReader, given the
// FileDescriptor to read from.
FileReader(FileDescriptor fd)

// Creates a new FileReader, given the
// name of the file to read from.
FileReader(String fileName)

// Java Program to illustrate reading from 
// FileReader using FileReader 
import java.io.*; 
public class ReadingFromFile 
{ 
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception 
  { 
    // pass the path to the file as a parameter 
    FileReader fr = 
      new FileReader("C:\\Users\\pankaj\\Desktop\\test.txt"); 
  
    int i; 
    while ((i=fr.read()) != -1) 
      System.out.print((char) i); 
  } 
} 

Using Scanner class: A simple text scanner which can parse primitive types and strings using regular expressions.
A Scanner breaks its input into tokens using a delimiter pattern, which by default matches whitespace. The resulting tokens may then be converted into values of different types using the various next methods.

// Java Program to illustrate reading from Text File 
// using Scanner Class 
import java.io.File; 
import java.util.Scanner; 
public class ReadFromFileUsingScanner 
{ 
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception 
  { 
    // pass the path to the file as a parameter 
    File file = 
      new File("C:\\Users\\pankaj\\Desktop\\test.txt"); 
    Scanner sc = new Scanner(file); 
  
    while (sc.hasNextLine()) 
      System.out.println(sc.nextLine()); 
  } 
} 

Using Scanner class but without using loops:

// Java Program to illustrate reading from FileReader 
// using Scanner Class reading entire File 
// without using loop 
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.txt"); 
    Scanner sc = new Scanner(file); 
  
    // we just need to use \\Z as delimiter 
    sc.useDelimiter("\\Z"); 
  
    System.out.println(sc.next()); 
  } 
} 

Reading the whole file in a List: Read all lines from a file. This method ensures that the file is closed when all bytes have been read or an I/O error, or other runtime exception, is thrown. Bytes from the file are decoded into characters using the specified charset.

public static List readAllLines(Path path,Charset cs)throws IOException

This method recognizes the following as line terminators:

\u000D followed by \u000A, CARRIAGE RETURN followed by LINE FEED
\u000A, LINE FEED
\u000D, CARRIAGE RETURN

// Java program to illustrate reading data from file 
// using nio.File 
import java.util.*; 
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets; 
import java.nio.file.*; 
import java.io.*; 
public class ReadFileIntoList 
{ 
  public static List<String> readFileInList(String fileName) 
  { 
  
    List<String> lines = Collections.emptyList(); 
    try
    { 
      lines = 
       Files.readAllLines(Paths.get(fileName), StandardCharsets.UTF_8); 
    } 
  
    catch (IOException e) 
    { 
  
      // do something 
      e.printStackTrace(); 
    } 
    return lines; 
  } 
  public static void main(String[] args) 
  { 
    List l = readFileInList("C:\\Users\\pankaj\\Desktop\\test.java"); 
  
    Iterator<String> itr = l.iterator(); 
    while (itr.hasNext()) 
      System.out.println(itr.next()); 
  } 
} 

Read a text file as String in Java:

// Java Program to illustrate reading from text file 
// as string in Java 
package io; 
import java.nio.file.*;; 
public class ReadTextAsString 
{ 
  public static String readFileAsString(String fileName)throws Exception 
  { 
    String data = ""; 
    data = new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get(fileName))); 
    return data; 
  } 
  
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception 
  { 
    String data = readFileAsString("C:\\Users\\pankaj\\Desktop\\test.java"); 
    System.out.println(data); 
  } 
} 

References:

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/io/package-summary.html
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/io/

This article is contributed by Pankaj Kumar. If you like GeeksforGeeks and would like to contribute, you can also write an article using contribute.geeksforgeeks.org or mail your article to contribute@geeksforgeeks.org. See your article appearing on the GeeksforGeeks main page and help other Geeks.

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