Question

Below is a block of code that does two things – the function readBCInputDataFromTextFile reads in a text file, and stores the read data in the variable textData which is a string array (i.e, String[]) The array size is populated using the int variable numOfLines (again in function readBCInputDataFromTextFile). This function works perfectly.

the second thing that the code does (in function checkBCInput) – and which doesn’t work right now – is separate data using regular expresssions and store it in 4 “containers” (all of which are vectors): bcStringConstant, bcNameVec, bcTempVec & bcHTCVec.

Now my question is: how do I pass the variable textData to function checkBCInput. If I combine code from both functions into one single java file, the code works on execution. But this way of getting things to work isn’t very good – modularising suffers. Hence the need on my part to separate the code into two functions – one that reads a text file and passes the read contents to the second function, which using regex stores the read data into specific containers.

I tried returning textData from readBCInputDataFromTextFile, but that won’t work in the current simulation that I’m running. I also tried to pass the read data to checkBCInput – but that lead to another error message: “Cannot find symbol: Symbol textData”. The second method (shown in bold below) is going to work, but I can’t see the solution yet :-/

/*
 * inputReader
 * Last Revision: July 19, 2012.
 */
// package below is specific to software
package macro;

import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

// Imports below are specific to the software
import star.base.neo.*;
import star.base.report.*;
import star.common.*;
import star.energy.*;
import star.flow.*;
import star.keturb.*;
import star.material.*;
import star.meshing.*;
import star.metrics.*;
import star.prismmesher.*;
import star.resurfacer.*;
import star.segregatedenergy.*;
import star.segregatedflow.*;
import star.solidmesher.*;
import star.trimmer.*;
import star.turbulence.*;
import star.vis.*;

// base class (StarMacro) is derived from software 
public class inputReader extends StarMacro {
/*************************************************** 
* 
* Global definitions
* 
***************************************************/
// Print output to screen?
int print_to_screen = 0;

// Variables to store BCs             

int noOfBounds = 0;
String inputBCTextFile = null;

Vector bcStringConstant = new Vector();
Vector bcNameVec = new Vector();
Vector bcTempValVec = new Vector();
Vector bcHTCValVec = new Vector();

public void execute(){
    // does nothing but function is required
}

public void readBCInputDataFromTextFile(String inputBCTextFile){

/*  
* READ INPUT FILE CONTENTS
*/

File dir = new File(System.getProperty("user.dir").toString() + File.separatorChar);  
if(print_to_screen == 0){
    sim.println("Directory where input text file is located: " + dir);
}
else{
    System.out.println("Directory where input text file is located: " + dir);
}

this.inputBCTextFile = inputBCTextFile;

if(print_to_screen == 0){
    sim.println("File name is: " + inputBCTextFile);
}
else{
    System.out.println("File name is: " + inputBCTextFile);
}


BufferedReader bf = null;        

try{
    bf = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inputBCTextFile));

    if(print_to_screen == 0){
        sim.println("FILE EXISTS!!");
    }
    else{
        System.out.println("FILE EXISTS!!");
    }

}

catch (FileNotFoundException e){

    if(print_to_screen == 0){
        sim.println("FILE NOT FOUND!!!");
    }
    else{
        System.err.println("FILE NOT FOUND!!!");
    }

    e.printStackTrace();
}

int numOfLines = 0;
String aLine;

try{
    while (( aLine = bf.readLine()) != null){
        numOfLines++;
    }
} 
catch (IOException e){
    if(print_to_screen == 0){
        sim.println("FILE NOT READ => NUMBER OF LINES IN FILE SET TO NULL");
    }
    else{
        System.err.println("FILE NOT READ => NUMBER OF LINES IN FILE SET TO NULL");
    }
    e.printStackTrace();

}

try{
    bf.close();
}
catch (IOException e){
    if(print_to_screen == 0){
        sim.println("FILE NOT CLOSED PROPERLY!!!");
    }
    else{
        System.err.println("FILE NOT CLOSED PROPERLY!!!");
    }

    e.printStackTrace();
}
BufferedReader textReader = null;

try{
    textReader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inputBCTextFile));
    if(print_to_screen == 0){
        sim.println("READING INPUT DATA FROM TEXT FILE");
    }
    else{
        System.out.println("READING INPUT DATA FROM TEXT FILE");
    }

} 
catch (FileNotFoundException e){
    if(print_to_screen == 0){
        sim.println("FILE NOT FOUND!!!");
    }
    else{
        System.err.println("FILE NOT FOUND!!!");
    }

    e.printStackTrace();
}

String[] textData = new String[numOfLines];

try{
for (int i = 0; i < numOfLines; i++){
    textData[i] = textReader.readLine();
    }
}
catch (IOException e){
    if(print_to_screen == 0){
        sim.println("FILE NOT READ!!!");
    }
    else{
        System.err.println("FILE NOT READ!!");                
    }

    e.printStackTrace();
}

 **checkBCInput(textData);**

try{
    if(print_to_screen == 0){
        sim.println("FILE READ AND CLOSED");
    }
    else{
        System.out.println("FILE READ AND CLOSED");
    }

    textReader.close();
    }
catch (IOException e){
    if(print_to_screen == 0){
        sim.println("FILE NOT CLOSED PROPERLY!!!");
    }
    else{
        System.err.println("FILE NOT CLOSED PROPERLY!!!");
    }

    e.printStackTrace();
   }

 }

public void checkBCInput(String[] textData){
    Pattern inputBCTextFileData = Pattern.compile("(.*)\t(.*)\t-?((\\d+\\.\\d*|\\d*\\.\\d+)|\\d+)\t-?((\\d+\\.\\d*|\\d*\\.\\d+)|\\d+)");

for (int i =0; i < textData.length; i++){
    Matcher inputBCTextFileDataMatcher = inputBCTextFileData.matcher(textData[i]);

    if(inputBCTextFileDataMatcher.find()){
        // 1st match is variable name
            bcStringConstant.add(inputBCTextFileDataMatcher.group(1)); // this is the 1st column in the text file
        bcNameVec.add(inputBCTextFileDataMatcher.group(2));
        bcTempValVec.add(inputBCTextFileDataMatcher.group(4)); // gets numbers in decimal notation
        bcHTCValVec.add(inputBCTextFileDataMatcher.group(6)); // gets numbers in decimal notation
    }
 }

 }  

}

Answer 1

I tried returning textData from readBCInputDataFromTextFile, but that
won’t work in the current simulation that I’m running.

Why not? Something like this should work:

String[] textData = readBCInputDataFromTextFile(...);
checkBCInput(textData);

Then change the return type of readBCInputDataFromTextFile to String[] and add a return textData; at the end of it.