getting the proper input from file

[mia_tech]

guys, suppose I have a text file with the following format

name lastname gpa major advisor

my problem here is with major which is sometimes compose of two words, but in my loop the second word of major becomes the first word of advisor... how could I get around that?
don't tell me

major = in.next();
major += in.next();

b/c some major have only one word..

[Parranoia]

You can use some character to separate each of the categories
Such as:

Smith#John#3.7#Computer Science#Mr. Jones

Then you can just get the whole line and split it up at each # character

[mia_tech]

You can use some character to separate each of the categories
Such as:

Smith#John#3.7#Computer Science#Mr. Jones

Then you can just get the whole line and split it up at each # character

my file is split with "tab"... can I just do the same using "tab" instead of some other character like #?

[andreas90]

my file is split with "tab"... can I just do the same using "tab" instead of some other character like #?

Yes, you can. You can use the String's split method with "tab" as a delimiter.

[mia_tech]

for some reason "tab" does not space every column equally in the same line

for example

String data1 = "john doe 2.5 computer science programming";

believe it or not every column is separated by a "tab" and as you can see they are not equally separated.. meaning not all columns have equal amount of blank spaces in between. Therefore when using data1.split(" ") with tab as a separator, it messes up the the input, and why is it that data1.split("\t") does not work?

[Norm]

why is it that data1.split("\t") does not work?

The \ character has special meaning in regular expressions. To use a \ you have to escape it.
And that is tricky. Try this: "\\\t"

EDIT: I just tried your code and it worked.

       String aStr = "csw\tdswws\tew322\tf";
       System.out.println(Arrays.toString(aStr.split("\t"))); // [csw, dswws, ew322, f]

[mia_tech]

The \ character has special meaning in regular expressions. To use a \ you have to escape it.
And that is tricky. Try this: "\\\t"

EDIT: I just tried your code and it worked.

       String aStr = "csw\tdswws\tew322\tf";
       System.out.println(Arrays.toString(aStr.split("\t"))); // [csw, dswws, ew322, f]

well, your code is not equal than mine... you actually inserted asci \t into the string.... I'm using keyboard tab. I tried escaping it but didn't work either

[Norm]

What characters are in a line in your text file?

Print out the bytes in the String you read from the file using the following technique:

       byte[] bytes = aStr.getBytes();
       System.out.println(Arrays.toString(bytes));

Replace aStr with the String variable that you read a line into from the file.
Post the output here.

I'm using keyboard tab

If you are in an editor, the editor could replace the tab with spaces.

[mia_tech]

If you are in an editor, the editor could replace the tab with spaces.

yeah, that was the problem, I just used notepad, which is a more cleaner editor, and it all worked (first time used notepad++)

by the way this is the output you ask for. How do you convert this back to asci characters?

[74, 111, 104, 110, 9, 83, 109, 105, 116, 104, 9, 51, 46, 52, 9, 67, 111, 109, 112, 117, 116, 101, 114, 32, 83, 99, 105, 101, 110, 99, 101, 9, 112, 114, 111, 103, 114, 97, 109, 109, 105, 110, 103]

[Norm]

Is your code working now?

[mia_tech]

Is your code working now?

yes, it is...

[Norm]

How do you convert this back to asci characters?

That output was so we could see what was in the file. Its source was the String of ASCII characters.