Question

I am trying to read a file in Java called “KFormLList.txt”. It is saved in the default package along with this program, yet when I try to run it I get this error message: “Error: KFormLList.txt (The system cannot find the file specified)”

What am I doing wrong? Thanks for any help.

import java.io.*;

public class VLOCGenerater {

/**
 * @param args
 */
public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
        //Read the text file "KFormLList.txt"
        FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("KFormLList.txt");

        DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(fis);
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(dis));
        String strLine;
        int V = 0;
        int LOC = 0;

        while((strLine = br.readLine())!= null ){
            if (strLine.trim().length() != 0){
                System.out.println(strLine);
                V++;
                }
            else {
                LOC++;
            }
        }
        System.out.println("V = " + V);
        System.out.println("LOC = " + LOC);
        dis.close();
     }
     catch (Exception e){
     System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
    }

}

}

Answer 1

Try putting the text file in the root directory of your project.

The name parameter passed into the FileInputStream constructor is the path name to the file in the file system.

A pathname, whether abstract or in string form, may be either absolute
or relative. An absolute pathname is complete in that no other
information is required in order to locate the file that it denotes. A
relative pathname, in contrast, must be interpreted in terms of
information taken from some other pathname. By default the classes in
the java.io package always resolve relative pathnames against the
current user directory. This directory is named by the system property
user.dir, and is typically the directory in which the Java virtual
machine was invoked.

I assumed you were using Eclipse, by default Eclipse sets the user.dir to your the root of your project. From reading other material, Netbeans follows the same convention.

This can be tested with the following code, which should output the path to your project:

System.out.println(System.getProperty("user.dir"));

Placing the file in the root of your directory allows it to be found by the FileInputStream.