Thread: What is the correct way to write to a Random Access File?

I'm using the "writeChar", "writeInt", etc methods, but they're making the file look really funky, like this:

__john_t__smith_ 454545454__history@_______

I have no idea what that is or why it's doing that. It looks ever weirder in the file itself, and I couldn't even copy paste it directly to here.

This is my code:

         public void writeToFile(RandomAccessFile raf)
        {              // write info to the file
                        raf.writeUTF(fname);
                        raf.writeChar(middleI);
                        raf.writeUTF(lname);
                        raf.writeUTF(ID);
                        raf.writeUTF(major);
                        raf.writeDouble(GPA);
 
                        // close the file
                        raf.close();
         }

anyone?

What are you expecting it to look like? Have you reviewed the API or Oracle's tutorial for hints/suggestions?

Yes, I have. I didn't see anything that claimed to do anything other than write to the file, which is what this is kind of doing.

I expect it to look like it looks when I write the information to a normal file, like this:

john t smith 454545454 history

That is, just characters that I typed in. I don't understand the weird things I'm seeing (little vertically standing rectangles standing upright between all the fields....I tried copy pasting them but it won't let me.) That doesn't look right....