Question

After running my program I get this beautifully formatted text:

What do I need add to my code in order to get this text outputted to a .txt file exactly as is?

Answer 1

Assuming you’re currently writing your output to the screen using something like System.out.Println(...), a comparable way to write text to a file is to use a PrintStream.

You should be able to find many examples of how to do that if you search; here’s one.

import java.io.*;

class PrintStreamDemo {  
  public static void main(String args[]){ 
   FileOutputStream out; 
  PrintStream ps; // declare a print stream object
  try {
 // Create a new file output stream
  out = new FileOutputStream("myfile.txt");

  // Connect print stream to the output stream
  ps = new PrintStream(out);

  ps.println ("This data is written to a file:");
  System.err.println ("Write successfully");
  ps.close();
  }
  catch (Exception e){
  System.err.println ("Error in writing to file");
  }
  }
}

ps. one caution: the “beautifully formatted” part of your text probably relies on the output being displayed in a monospaced font (all characters the same width); if viewed in a non-monospaced font, the columns won’t line up. If you’re saving it as a plain .txt file, you don’t have control over what font someone else will use to display that file when they open it.

---

Update:

There are a couple of approaches you could take, if you find you’ve got a program full of System.out.println calls and you want to direct the output to a file instead.

1) The quick & dirty way would be to open a PrintStream to your desired output file, then call System.setOut() to redirect System.out to the specified PrintStream.

2) A perhaps cleaner way would be to rewrite all the calls of System.out.println to use your own output method. That way when you want to change how you’re handling output (for example, send it to multiple files, to both the screen and a file, or whatever), you have just one place to change. More work up front, but gives you more flexibility in the end.