Question

I have a particular file that Java says is empty…

Source Code

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.util.Scanner;

public class MinimumWorkingExample
{
    public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException
    {
        String filename = "/home/tyson/Data/English-French_test/test/test.f";
        Scanner fileIn = new Scanner(new File(filename));
        System.out.println("***START***");
        while(fileIn.hasNextLine())
        {
            System.out.println(fileIn.nextLine());
        }
        System.out.println("***FINISH***");
    }
}

Output

***START***
***FINISH***

…but the file is not empty:

Console

tyson@tyson-desktop:~$ head /home/tyson/Data/English-French_test/test/test.f
<s snum=0001> 2 .  </s>
<s snum=0002> 2 .  </s>
<s snum=0003> oh , oh !  </s>
<s snum=0004> oh , oh !  </s>
<s snum=0005> oh , oh !  </s>
<s snum=0006> souvenons - nous , monsieur le Orateur , que ce sont ces secteurs de notre soci�t� qui servent de �pine dorsale � notre �conomie .  </s>
<s snum=0007> bravo !  </s>
<s snum=0008> bravo !  </s>
<s snum=0009> monsieur le Orateur , ma question se adresse � le ministre charg� de les transports .  </s>
<s snum=0010> tous deux poss�dent de nombreuses ann�es de exp�rience dans la fabrication et la distribution de les produits forestiers .  </s>
tyson@tyson-desktop:~$ 

Question

Why is this happening???

Answer 1

Also do Scanner fileIn = new Scanner(new File(filename), “Cp1252”); as this is the encoding for French, and your system seems to be UTF-8.
The Scanner might have encoding problems if it thinks to read UTF-8 multibytes.