How to open a txt file and read numbers in Java

Read file, parse each line into an integer and store into a list:

List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();
File file = new File("file.txt");
BufferedReader reader = null;

try {
    reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
    String text = null;

    while ((text = reader.readLine()) != null) {
        list.add(Integer.parseInt(text));
    }
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
    try {
        if (reader != null) {
            reader.close();
        }
    } catch (IOException e) {
    }
}

//print out the list
System.out.println(list);

   try{

    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("textfile.txt"));
    String strLine;
    //Read File Line By Line
    while ((strLine = br.readLine()) != null)   {
      // Print the content on the console
      System.out.println (strLine);
    }
    //Close the input stream
    in.close();
    }catch (Exception e){//Catch exception if any
      System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
    }finally{
     in.close();
    }

This will read line by line,

If your no. are saperated by newline char. then in place of

 System.out.println (strLine);

You can have

try{
int i = Integer.parseInt(strLine);
}catch(NumberFormatException npe){
//do something
}  

If it is separated by spaces then

try{
    String noInStringArr[] = strLine.split(" ");
//then you can parse it to Int as above
    }catch(NumberFormatException npe){
    //do something
    }  

A much shorter alternative is below:

Path filePath = Paths.get("file.txt");
Scanner scanner = new Scanner(filePath);
List<Integer> integers = new ArrayList<>();
while (scanner.hasNext()) {
    if (scanner.hasNextInt()) {
        integers.add(scanner.nextInt());
    } else {
        scanner.next();
    }
}

A Scanner breaks its input into tokens using a delimiter pattern, which by default matches whitespace. Although default delimiter is whitespace, it successfully found all integers separated by new line character.


Good news in Java 8 we can do it in one line:

List<Integer> ints = Files.lines(Paths.get(fileName))
                          .map(Integer::parseInt)
                          .collect(Collectors.toList());

Tags:

Java