Question

The code below is my attempt to read from a file of strings, read through each line until a ‘:’ is found then store + print everything after that. however The print function prints out everything that I read in from the file. Can someone spot where I’m going wrong? thanks

edit: every line is in this format “Some text here:More text here”

public void openFile() {

        try {
            scanner = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("calendar.ics"));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.out.println("Could not open file");

        }

    }

    public void readFile() {
        ArrayList<String> vals = new ArrayList<String>();
        String test;

        try {
        while ((line = scanner.readLine()) != null)
        {

        int indexOfComma = line.indexOf("\\:"); // returns firstIndexOf ':'
        test = line.substring(indexOfComma+1);  // test to be everything after ':'
        vals.add(test);  // add values to vals
        }
        }  catch(Exception ex){ }

            for(int i=0; i<vals.size(); i++){
         System.out.println(vals.get(i));
    }
    } 

Answer 1

You don’t need to escape your colon.

line.indexOf("\\:");

Change the above line to: –

line.indexOf(":"); 

Because, that will search for \\:, and if not found return the value -1.

test = line.substring(indexOfComma+1); 

So, if your indexComma is -1, which will certainly be, if your string does not contain – \\:, then your above line becomes: –

line.substring(0);  // same as whole string

---

As a suggestion, you should have abstract type as the type of reference when declaring your list. So, you should use List instead of ArrayList on the LHS of the List declaration: –

List<String> vals = new ArrayList<String>();