Pulling values from a Java Properties file in order?

Nope - maps are inherently "unordered".

You could possibly create your own subclass of Properties which overrode setProperty and possibly put, but it would probably get very implementation-specific... Properties is a prime example of bad encapsulation. When I last wrote an extended version (about 10 years ago!) it ended up being hideous and definitely sensitive to the implementation details of Properties.

Extend java.util.Properties, override both put() and keys():

import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Enumeration;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.LinkedHashSet;
import java.util.Properties;
import java.util.HashMap;

public class LinkedProperties extends Properties {
    private final HashSet<Object> keys = new LinkedHashSet<Object>();

    public LinkedProperties() {
    }

    public Iterable<Object> orderedKeys() {
        return Collections.list(keys());
    }

    public Enumeration<Object> keys() {
        return Collections.<Object>enumeration(keys);
    }

    public Object put(Object key, Object value) {
        keys.add(key);
        return super.put(key, value);
    }
}

Working example :

Map<String,String> properties = getOrderedProperties(new FileInputStream(new File("./a.properties")));
properties.entrySet().forEach(System.out::println);

Code for it

public Map<String, String> getOrderedProperties(InputStream in) throws IOException{
    Map<String, String> mp = new LinkedHashMap<>();
    (new Properties(){
        public synchronized Object put(Object key, Object value) {
            return mp.put((String) key, (String) value);
        }
    }).load(in);
    return mp;
}

If you can alter the property names your could prefix them with a numeral or other sortable prefix and then sort the Properties KeySet.