Question

I am trying to write a Java program that simulates a record store shopping cart. The first step is to open up the inventory.txt file and read the contents which is basically what the “store has to offer“. Then I need to read every line individually and process the id record and price.

The current method outputs a result that is very close to what I need, however, it picks up on the item id of the next line, as you can see below.

I was wondering if someone can assist me in figuring out how to process every line in the text document individually and store every piece of data in its own variable without picking up the id of the next item?

public void openFile(){
    try{
        x = new Scanner(new File("inventory.txt"));
        x.useDelimiter(",");
    }
    catch(Exception e){
        System.out.println("Could not find file");
    }
}

public void readFile(){
    while(x.hasNext()){
        String id = x.next();
        String record = x.next();
        String price = x.next();            
        System.out.println(id + " " + record + " " + price);
        break;
    }
}

.txt document:

11111, "Hush Hush... - Pussycat Dolls", 12.95
22222, "Animal - Ke$ha", 9.95
33333, "Hanging By A Moment - Lifehouse - Single, 4.95
44444, "Have A Nice Day - Bon Jovi", 9.99
55555, "Day & Age - Killers", 10.99
66666, "She Wolf - Shakira", 15.99
77777, "Dark Horse - Nickelback", 12.99
88888, "The E.N.D. - Black Eyed Peas", 10.95

actual output

11111  "Hush Hush... - Pussycat Dolls"  12.95
22222

expected result

11111  "Hush Hush... - Pussycat Dolls"  12.95

Answer 1

You can use a Pattern as the argument to Scanner.useDelimiter. Use this to provide alernates for the delimiter: either comma, or the line separator.

x.useDelimiter(",|" + System.getProperty("line.separator"));

Depending on what your input file uses as the line separator, you may need to change the second option.

The advice in other answers to use an existing CSV library is good: parsing CSV isn’t as simple as breaking up the input around commas.