Reading and Storing Multiple Files

Question

What I am trying to do is read from multiple files and then store the contents of the files into a data structure. I will know how many files I have and the names of the files but the number and names of files can change. After I read in all the contents of the files and store them I need to be able to find a specific string that contains across all the files.

What I am having trouble is I have no idea what will be the easiest data structure for this task. I was thinking a hashmap, and using the file names as a key. Would that work? Is there a better data structure? I am using Java

Edit: I have been reading the contents of a file into an ArrayList because each line contains separate information that I need to be able to reference in the future.

Answer 1

If your files are not big enough then you can use this simple Map

       Map<String, List<String>> map = new HashMap<String, List<String>>();

key(String) as file name value(ArrayList) as contents of the file (lines)

If your files are so big then this data structure would not be sufficient.