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Reading a plain text file in Java

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?

Solution

  • 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)