Question

I want make a game of life clone using text files to specify my starting board, then write the finished board to a new text file in a similar format. E.g. load this:

Board in:

wbbbw
bbbbb
wwwww
wbwbw
bwbwb

from a file, then output something like this:

Board out:

wbbbw
bbbbb
wwwww
wwwww
bwbwb

I do this by making a 2D array (char[][] board) of characters, reading the file line by line into a string, and using String.charAt() to access each character and store it in the array.

Afterward, I convert each element of board (i.e., board[0], board[1], etc.), back to a string using String.valueOf(), and write that to a new line in the second file.

Please tell me I’m an idiot for doing this and that there is a better way to go through the file -> string -> array -> string -> file process.

Answer 1

You can use String.toCharArray() for each line while reading the file.

char[][] board = new char[5][];
int i = 0;
while((line = buffRdr.readLine()) != null) {
    board[i++] = line.toCharArray();
}

And while writing either String.valueOf() or java.util.Arrays.toString().

for(int i=0; i<board.length; i++) {
    //write Arrays.toString(board[i]);
}