Question

I have the following code which utilises Guava’s Files.readLines() method:

List<String> strings = Lists.newArrayList();
final File file = new File(filePath);
if (file.isFile()) {
  try {
    strings= Files.readLines(file, Charsets.UTF_8);
  }
  catch (IOException ioe) {}
}
else {
  // File does not exist
}

Once I have my List of String I’d like to test to see if a current String which I am looking at was in the file.

String myString = "foo";
if (strings.contains(myString)) {
  // Do something
}

However, I’d like to make the code tolerant to the original file contain leading or trailing spaces (i.e. " foo ").

What is the most elegant way of achieving this?

Answer 1

The only alternative to tskuzzy’s approach that I can think of is as follows:

List<String> trimmedLines = Files.readLines(file, Charsets.UTF_8,
  new LineProcessor<List<String>>() {
    List<String> result = Lists.newArrayList();

    public boolean processLine(String line) {
      result.add(line.trim());
    }
    public List<String> getResult() {return result;}
  });