Putting items from file into a string array

Question

How do I input the items from a file into a String array?? This is what i have so far, but it keeps displaying null as a result! Anyone know what the problem may be?

  public static void main(String[] args) {

    File inFile = new File("GUGU.txt"); // connect the program and file
    String input;

    int numLines = 0;
    String[] words = new String[50];//large enough to store 50 names
    int big = 0;

    String firstLine = "";
    if (inFile.exists() && inFile.length() != 0) {
        try {
            System.out.println("File read");
            BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inFile));
            input = in.readLine();
            while (input != null) {  // continue while not end of file

                if (input.length() > big) {
                    big = input.length();
                }
                words[numLines] = input;

                numLines++;
                input = in.readLine();
                System.out.println(words[numLines]); 
            }

        } catch (java.io.IOException e) {
            System.out.println(e);
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Move the println to before you increment the numlines variable. You are printing whatever is next in your array, which is null since the array is empty.

Answer 2

Hoping its not an assignment question. If you need to read file into a string array, you can do this in mere 3-4 lines of code. Apache fileutils class provides lots of flexibilties like this.