Question

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Replace first line of a text file in Java
Java – Find a line in a file and remove

I am trying to find a way to remove the first line of text in a text file using java. Would like to use a scanner to do it…is there a good way to do it without the need of a tmp file?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Scanner fileScanner = new Scanner(myFile);
fileScanner.nextLine();

This will return the first line of text from the file and discard it because you don’t store it anywhere.

To overwrite your existing file:

FileWriter fileStream = new FileWriter("my/path/for/file.txt");
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(fileStream);
while(fileScanner.hasNextLine()) {
    String next = fileScanner.nextLine();
    if(next.equals("\n")) 
       out.newLine();
    else 
       out.write(next);
    out.newLine();   
}
out.close();

Note that you will have to be catching and handling some IOExceptions this way. Also, the if()... else()... statement is necessary in the while() loop to keep any line breaks present in your text file.