Question

I have this function:

public static int checkRank(String lineToCompare){
    int rank = 0;
    try{
        // Open the file that is the first 
        // command line parameter
        FileInputStream fstream = new FileInputStream("ranks.txt");

        // Get the object of DataInputStream
        DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream(fstream);
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));

        String strLine;
        //Read File Line By Line
        System.out.println("SPOT 0");
        while ((strLine = br.readLine()) != null)   {
            //Compare the line with the line to compare (string)
            System.out.println("SPOT 1");
            if(strLine.trim().equals(lineToCompare)) {
                //I found it!  Read the next line...
                final String lineAfter = br.readLine();
                rank = Integer.parseInt(lineAfter);  
                System.out.println("SPOT 2");
            }else{
                rank = 0;
                System.out.println("SPOT 3");
            }
        }

        //Close the input stream
        in.close();
    }catch (Exception e){//Catch exception if any
        System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
    }

    System.out.println("Username: " + lineToCompare + " | Rank: " + rank);
    return rank;
}

My ranks.txt file is as follows:

test1
2
test2
1

The console outputs (the “SPOT”s were just used for debugging):

[Commands] SPOT 0
[Commands] SPOT 1
[Commands] SPOT 2
[Commands] SPOT 1
[Commands] SPOT 3
[Commands] SPOT 1
[Commands] SPOT 3
[Commands] Username: test1 | Rank: 0

As you can see, if it were working correctly it would say test1 has a rank of 2. Can someone help me identify the problem?

Answer 1

You should add a break; statement after the line where you print out “SPOT 2” to end the while loop.

Without the break you set the rank to 0 when you read the line “test2” and then again when you read the line “1” (the while loop continues until the end of file).