Question

So my question is just how the title goes. Below is a snippet of my code. I understand that I’m supposed to use try/catch but in my catch, I’m not sure what to do in it. I’m getting an error /HERE/ saying that a BufferedReader cannot take in an InputStream. I want to continue using a BufferedReader, so is there any other class that I could instantiate w/in my new BufferedReader so that my compiler will be happy? Any help will be much appreciated, thank you!

    //reads in 'dictionary' file
    BufferedReader bReader;
    try
    {
        bReader = new BufferedReader
                (new FileReader("unsortedWords.txt"));
    }
    catch (FileNotFoundException e)
    {
        System.out.print("Enter name of dictionary file: ");
        bReader = new BufferedReader
                (new FileReader(System.in)); /*HERE*/
    }

Answer 1

Maybe this:

File file = new File("unsortedWords.txt");
if(file.exists())
{
 // do something
}
else
{
 // prompt for file
 // if command line you can use Scanner or an InputStreamReader
 // if GUI you can use a File Chooser.
}

If you are unsure how to do the command line or GUI thing then just ask me and I will post the rest of the code.

[EDIT]:
I see you are doing the command line, so you can try this:

InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);
String line = br.readLine();

[EDIT]: Sample Class (yes it has bad design, but I wrote it quickly):

import java.io.*;

public class Temp
{

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
    {
        InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);
        System.out.println("Hello World!");
        String temp = br.readLine();
        System.out.println("Your line : \"" + temp + "\"");
    }
}

[EDIT]:
Here is a class that I made which should work for you.

import java.io.*;

public class Temp
{

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
    {
        String fileName = "RandomFileThatDoesntExist";
        File file = new File(fileName);

        if(file.exists())
        {
            FileReader fr = new FileReader(fileName);
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(fr);
            String line;
            while((line = br.readLine()) != null)
            {
                System.out.println(line);
            }
        }
        else
        {
            InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);
            System.out.println("Enter file Name:");
            String line;
            while(true)
            {
                line = br.readLine();
                File myFile = new File(line);
                if(myFile.exists())
                    break;
                else
                    System.out.println("Error, file doesn't exist!");
            }
            FileReader fr = new FileReader(line);
            BufferedReader br2 = new BufferedReader(fr);
            System.out.println("File contents:");
            while((line = br2.readLine()) != null)
            {
                System.out.println(line);
            }
        }
    }
}

Screenshot: