Question

The first part of this “Frankenstein-ed” Java works perfectly, however the second part outputs some jumbled nonsense. So the variable of result will be my input from the user. I had to first UpperCase the string before I did the parsing for some dumb reason, it’s hard when you come from the Database/Analysis background and know you do something in seconds and not get an error… I gave credit where credit is due within the code…

myfile.txt —> [Ljava.lang.String;@19821f

  import java.io.*;
/*http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#split%28java.lang.String%29*/

  public class StringParser {

  public static void main (String arg[])
     throws FileNotFoundException {
String result = "eggs toast bacon bacon butter ice beer".toUpperCase();
  String[] resultU = result.split("\\s");
  String[] y = resultU;

  {
for (int x=0; x< resultU.length; x++)



    System.out.println(resultU[x]);


  /*http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/java103/java103.html#output*/

            FileOutputStream out; // declare a file output object
            PrintStream p; // declare a print stream object

            try
            {
                    // Create a new file output stream
                    // connected to "myfile.txt"
                    out = new FileOutputStream("myfile.txt");

                    // Connect print stream to the output stream
                    p = new PrintStream( out );

                    p.println (resultU);

                    p.close();
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                    System.err.println ("Error writing to file");
            }
    }
}
}

Answer 1

Do you realize you’re overwriting the same file for each element in your array?

You should use

out = new FileOutputStream("myfile.txt", true); // appends to existing file

As well as printing the actual element, not the String representation of the whole array

p.println(resultU[x]);  // resultU without index prints the whole array - yuk!

Although you should probably update your code to only create the output File once and just write each element of the array to the same output stream, as the current method is a bit inefficient.

Something like

public static void main(String[] args) {

    String result = "eggs toast bacon bacon butter ice beer".toUpperCase();

    PrintStream p = null;

    try {
        p = new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream("myfile.txt"));

        for (String s : result.split("\\s")) {
            p.println(s);
            p.flush(); // probably not necessary
        }

    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace(); // should really use a logger instead!
    } finally {
        try {
            p.close(); // wouldn't need this in Java 7!
        } catch (Exception e) {
        }
    }
}