Thread: Reading integeres from a .txt file, my method never terminates.

Ok so I have made this small program, where you can type in the directory of a file and then my program, can count the ints, compute the max, min, sum and average. I have two methods, one which can only read files only containing ints, another one (the one that does not work) improvedIntReader which can read only ints from a .txt not only containing ints.

So what is the problem with my improvedIntReader?

Here is the source code:

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
 
public class IntReader {
 
	public static Scanner filePrompter(Scanner console) {
		Scanner input = null;
		while (input == null) {
			System.out.println("What is the name of the file? ");
			String name = console.nextLine();
			try {
				input = new Scanner(new File(name));
			} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
				System.out.println("File not found.");
				System.out.println("Please try again.");
			}
		}
		return input;
	}
 
	public static void intReader(Scanner input) {
		int count = 0;
		int sum = 0;
		int max = 0;
		int min = 0;
		try {
			min = input.nextInt();
			max = min;
			sum = min;
			count++;
		} catch (NoSuchElementException | IllegalArgumentException e) {
			min = 0;
			max = 0;
		} 
		while(input.hasNextLine()) {
			int number = input.nextInt();
			sum += number;
			count++;
			if(number > max) {
				max = number;
			}
			if(number < min) {
				min = number;
			}
 
			}
		double average = (double) sum / count;
		System.out.println("Max: " + max);
		System.out.println("Min: " + min);
		System.out.println("Sum: " + sum);
		System.out.println("Count: " + count);
		System.out.println("Average: " + average);
	}
 
	public static void improvedIntReader(Scanner input) {
		int count = 0;
		int sum = 0;
		int max = 0;
		int min = 0;
		try {
			while(!(input.hasNextInt())) {
				input.next();
			}
			min = input.nextInt();
			max = min;
			min = sum;
			count++;
		} catch (NoSuchElementException | IllegalArgumentException e) {
			min = 0;
			max = 0;
		} 
		while(input.hasNextLine()) {
			String text = input.nextLine();
			Scanner data = new Scanner(text);
			while(data.hasNext()) {
				if(data.hasNextInt()) {
					int number = input.nextInt();
					sum += number;
					count++;
					if(number > max) {
						max = number;
					}
					if(number < min) {
						min = number;
					} else {
						data.next();
					}
				}		
			}
			}
		double average = (double) sum / count;
		System.out.println("Max: " + max);
		System.out.println("Min: " + min);
		System.out.println("Sum: " + sum);
		System.out.println("Count: " + count);
		System.out.println("Average: " + average);
	}
 
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Scanner console = new Scanner(System.in);
		System.out.println("Type 1 for the advanced version:");
		if(console.nextLine().equals("1")) {
			Scanner input = filePrompter(console);
			improvedIntReader(input);	
		} else {
			Scanner input = filePrompter(console);
			intReader(input);	
		}
}
}

What are the symptoms? Error messages? Post them. Post a sample run and describe what's wrong with it. Give us something to work with.

Well as I stated in my post, the program simply stands idle not ever terminating. When I try and read this, .txt file:

4 billy bob -2 18 2,54
15 31 NotANumber

true 'c' 27

The while loop:

while(data.hasNext())

is an infinite loop. I believe the reason is because the enclosed if logic is not as you intended. Which 'if' is the 'else' supposed to belong to? Which does it belong to?

Originally Posted by GregBrannon

The while loop:

while(data.hasNext())

is an infinite loop. I believe the reason is because the enclosed if logic is not as you intended. Which 'if' is the 'else' supposed to belong to? Which does it belong to?

Well I have solved it now, so thanks a lot for the help!

I had the wrong scanner object in my nested while loop, so instead of input.nextInt(), it should be data.nextInt(). And yeah the else should not be inside of the if statement.

Btw this piece of code ends up constructing quite a lot of Scanner objects, in the nested while loop, 6 to be more precise. So is that desirable? Eclipse gives me a warning of resource leak, telling me that this data object is never closed.

I would have used only one Scanner object available as a resource throughout the class rather than having multiple objects passed to the methods. I found your filePrompter() method an interesting approach, but rather than returning the Scanner object with the file specified, I would have simply returned the file or file name and applied the existing Scanner resource to it. Returning a File object would have completed the try/catch block requirement and would IMO be preferable.

As for the leaky resource warning, it's simple enough to close the object when you're done with it. For a Scanner object named input, simply:

input.close();

Add that to your list of good habits or best practices.