Find a line in a file and remove it

So, whenever I hear someone mention that they want to filter out text, I immediately think to go to Streams (mainly because there is a method called filter which filters exactly as you need it to). Another answer mentions using Streams with the Apache commons-io library, but I thought it would be worthwhile to show how this can be done in standard Java 8. Here is the simplest form:

public void removeLine(String lineContent) throws IOException
{
    File file = new File("myFile.txt");
    List<String> out = Files.lines(file.toPath())
                        .filter(line -> !line.contains(lineContent))
                        .collect(Collectors.toList());
    Files.write(file.toPath(), out, StandardOpenOption.WRITE, StandardOpenOption.TRUNCATE_EXISTING);
}

I think there isn't too much to explain there, basically Files.lines gets a Stream<String> of the lines of the file, filter takes out the lines we don't want, then collect puts all of the lines of the new file into a List. We then write the list over top of the existing file with Files.write, using the additional option TRUNCATE so the old contents of the file are replaced.

Of course, this approach has the downside of loading every line into memory as they all get stored into a List before being written back out. If we wanted to simply modify without storing, we would need to use some form of OutputStream to write each new line to a file as it passes through the stream, like this:

public void removeLine(String lineContent) throws IOException
{
    File file = new File("myFile.txt");
    File temp = new File("_temp_");
    PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter(temp));
    Files.lines(file.toPath())
        .filter(line -> !line.contains(lineContent))
        .forEach(out::println);
    out.flush();
    out.close();
    temp.renameTo(file);
}

Not much has been changed in this example. Basically, instead of using collect to gather the file contents into memory, we use forEach so that each line that makes it through the filter gets sent to the PrintWriter to be written out to the file immediately and not stored. We have to save it to a temporary file, because we can't overwrite the existing file at the same time as we are still reading from it, so then at the end, we rename the temp file to replace the existing file.


This solution may not be optimal or pretty, but it works. It reads in an input file line by line, writing each line out to a temporary output file. Whenever it encounters a line that matches what you are looking for, it skips writing that one out. It then renames the output file. I have omitted error handling, closing of readers/writers, etc. from the example. I also assume there is no leading or trailing whitespace in the line you are looking for. Change the code around trim() as needed so you can find a match.

File inputFile = new File("myFile.txt");
File tempFile = new File("myTempFile.txt");

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inputFile));
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile));

String lineToRemove = "bbb";
String currentLine;

while((currentLine = reader.readLine()) != null) {
    // trim newline when comparing with lineToRemove
    String trimmedLine = currentLine.trim();
    if(trimmedLine.equals(lineToRemove)) continue;
    writer.write(currentLine + System.getProperty("line.separator"));
}
writer.close(); 
reader.close(); 
boolean successful = tempFile.renameTo(inputFile);


    public void removeLineFromFile(String file, String lineToRemove) {

    try {

      File inFile = new File(file);

      if (!inFile.isFile()) {
        System.out.println("Parameter is not an existing file");
        return;
      }

      //Construct the new file that will later be renamed to the original filename.
      File tempFile = new File(inFile.getAbsolutePath() + ".tmp");

      BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
      PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile));

      String line = null;

      //Read from the original file and write to the new
      //unless content matches data to be removed.
      while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {

        if (!line.trim().equals(lineToRemove)) {

          pw.println(line);
          pw.flush();
        }
      }
      pw.close();
      br.close();

      //Delete the original file
      if (!inFile.delete()) {
        System.out.println("Could not delete file");
        return;
      }

      //Rename the new file to the filename the original file had.
      if (!tempFile.renameTo(inFile))
        System.out.println("Could not rename file");

    }
    catch (FileNotFoundException ex) {
      ex.printStackTrace();
    }
    catch (IOException ex) {
      ex.printStackTrace();
    }
  }

This I have found on the internet.


You want to do something like the following:

  • Open the old file for reading
  • Open a new (temporary) file for writing
  • Iterate over the lines in the old file (probably using a BufferedReader)
    • For each line, check if it matches what you are supposed to remove
    • If it matches, do nothing
    • If it doesn't match, write it to the temporary file
  • When done, close both files
  • Delete the old file
  • Rename the temporary file to the name of the original file

(I won't write the actual code, since this looks like homework, but feel free to post other questions on specific bits that you have trouble with)

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