Java: How to scan from a user specified file

Question

More specifically, how could I write code that could create a scanner for any text file that the user enters? For instance, one user might want to scan text from "foo.txt," and another might want to read from "bar.txt." How do I compensate for this?

Answer 1

You can simply make a function that opens a file and returns the reader so that you can read each line:

public BufferedReader readFromFile(String path) {
    try {
        return new BufferedReader(new FileReader(path));
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

Then use the BufferedReader which it returns and iterate through each line! Hope it helps!

Answer 2

You can take the path to the file as an input to the program. For taking input, you can have a look at http://www.programmingsimplified.com/java/source-code/java-program-take-input-from-user

Once you have this path in a variable, you can replace the hardcoded file names by this variable instead.