Question

From GWT I read a text file “myFile.txt” as per below. The issue is that I get different results in the “input” string depending on the server:

• If I run in from Eclipse Indigo local server (debugging), “input” includes at the end characters “\r” and “\n”.
• If I run it from Google App Engine, “input” includes at the end character “\n” only, so one character less in input.length.

Why does this happen, and how can I have the same behaviour?

Thanks

String input=readFromFile("myFile.txt");

public String readFromFile(String fileName) {
  File file = new File(fileName);
  StringBuffer contents = new StringBuffer();
  BufferedReader reader = null;
  try {
    reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
    String text = null;
    while ((text = reader.readLine()) != null) {
    contents.append(text).append(System.getProperty("line.separator"));
    }
  } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
  } catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
  } finally {
    try {
      if (reader != null) {
        reader.close();
      }
    } catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }
  contents.deleteCharAt(contents.length()-2); // Remove to make it work in GAE
  contents.deleteCharAt(contents.length()-1);
  return contents.toString();
}

Answer 1

Because line separators are different on different OSes. This is what System.getProperty("line.separator") does.

On Windows it’s \r\n\ (two chars), while on Linux it’s \n (one char). See here..