Question

I need to retrieve two lines from 1 .txt files and output them to a dialog box. My code as of now is

private String getfirstItem() {
     String info = "";
     File details = new File(myFile);
     if(!details.exists()){
            try {
                details.createNewFile();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }

      BufferedReader read = null;
    try {
        read  = new BufferedReader (new FileReader(myFile));
    } catch (FileNotFoundException e3) {
        e3.printStackTrace();
    }

     for (int i = baseStartLine; i < baseStartLine + 1; i++) {
                  try {
                info = read.readLine();
                } catch (IOException e) {

                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            } 
            firstItem = info;             
          try {
              read.close();
        } catch (IOException e3) {

            e3.printStackTrace();
        }
          return firstItem;
}

private String getsecondItem() {
    File details = new File(myFile);
    String info = "";
   BufferedReader reader = null;
  if(!details.exists()){
try {
    details.createNewFile();
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();

}}



try {
reader   = new BufferedReader (new FileReader(myFile));
} catch (FileNotFoundException e3) {
    e3.printStackTrace();
    }

 for (int i = modelStartLine; i < modelStartLine + 1; i++) {
          try {
     info= reader.readLine();
            } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();}
        modelName = info;}  try {
          reader.close();
} catch (IOException e3) {
    e3.printStackTrace();
    }
 return secondItem;
}

However, i keep getting the same value for both? modelStartLine=1 and baseStartLine =2

Answer 1

You’re never actually skipping any lines. You start your loop index from a different number, but you still loop only once, from the beginning of the file. Your loop should look something like this:

public string readNthLine(string fileName, int lineNumber) {
    // Omitted: try/catch blocks and error checking in general
    // Open the file for reading etc.

    ...

    // Skip the first lineNumber - 1 lines
    for (int i = 0; i < lineNumber - 1; i++) {
        reader.readLine();
    }

    // The next line to be read is the desired line
    String retLine = reader.readLine();

    return retLine;
}

Now you can just call the function like this:

String firstItem = readNthLine(fileName, 1);
String secondItem = readNthLine(fileName, 2);

However. Since you just want the first two lines of the file, you can just read them both initially:

// Open the file and then...
String firstItem = reader.readLine();
String secondItem = reader.readLine();