Develop Reference

When do I need to specify the encoding while writing the file to the disk?

I have a sample method which copies one file to another using InputStream and OutputStream. In this case, the source file is encoded in 'UTF-8'. Even if I don't specify the encoding while writing to the disk, the destination file has the correct encoding. But, if I have to write a java.lang.String to a file, I need to specify the encoding. Why is that ?
public static void copyFile() {
String sourceFilePath = "C://my_encoded.txt";
InputStream inStream = null;
OutputStream outStream = null;
try{
String targetFilePath = "C://my_target.txt";
File sourcefile =new File(sourceFilePath);
outStream = new FileOutputStream(targetFilePath);
inStream = new FileInputStream(sourcefile);
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
int length;
//copy the file content in bytes
while ((length = inStream.read(buffer)) > 0){
outStream.write(buffer, 0, length);
}
inStream.close();
outStream.close();
System.out.println("File "+targetFilePath+" is copied successful!");
}catch(IOException e){
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
My guess is that since the source file has thee correct encoding and since we read and write one byte at a time, it works fine. And java.lang.String is 'UTF-16' by default and if we write it to the file, it reads one byte at a time instead of 2 bytes and hence garbage values. Is that correct or am I completely wrong in my understanding ?

You are copying the file byte per byte, so you don't need to care about character encoding.
As a rule of thumb:
Use the various InputStream and OutputStream implementations for byte-wise processing (like file copy).
There are some convenience methods to handle text directly like PrintStream.println(). Be careful because most of them use the default platform specific encoding.
Use the various Reader and Writer implemenations for reading and writing text.
If you need to convert between byte-wise and text processing use InputStreamReader and OutputStreamWriter with explicit file encoding.
Do not rely on the default encoding. The default character encoding is platform specific (e.g. Windows-ANSI aka Cp1252 for Windows, usually UTF-8 on Linux).
Example: If you need to read a UTF-8 text file:
BufferedReader reader =
new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(inFile), "UTF-8"));
Avoid using a FileReader because a FileReader uses always the default encoding.
A special case: If you need random access to a file you should use RandomAccessFile. With it you can read and write data blocks at arbitrary positions. You can read and write raw byte blocks or you can use convenience methods to read and write text. But you should read the documentation carefully. E.g. the methods readUTF() and writeUTF() use a modified UTF-8 encoding.
InputStream, OutputStream, Reader, Writer and RandomAccessFile form the basic IO functionality, enough for most use cases. For advanced IO (e.g. memory mapped files, ...) have a look at package java.nio.

Just read your code! (For the copy part at least ;-) )
When you copy the two files, you copy it byte by byte. There is no conversion to String, thus.
When you write a String into a file, you need to convert it (indirectly sometimes) in an array of byte (byte[]). There you need to specify your encoding.
When you read a file to get a String, you need to know its encoding in order to do it properly. Java doesn't 'skip' any byte but you need to make a conversion once again : from a byte[] to a String.

equivalent to Files.readAllLines() for InputStream or Reader?

I have a file that I've been reading into a List via the following method:
List<String> doc = java.nio.file.Files.readAllLines(new File("/path/to/src/resources/citylist.csv").toPath(), StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
Is there any nice (single-line) Java 7/8/nio2 way to pull off the same feat with a file that's inside an executable Jar (and presumably, has to be read with an InputStream)? Perhaps a way to open an InputStream via the classloader, then somehow coerce/transform/wrap it into a Path object? Or some new subclass of InputStream or Reader that contains an equivalent to File.readAllLines(...)?
I know I could do it the traditional way in a half page of code, or via some external library... but before I do, I want to make sure that recent releases of Java can't already do it "out of the box".

An InputStream represents a stream of bytes. Those bytes don't necessarily form (text) content that can be read line by line.
If you know that the InputStream can be interpreted as text, you can wrap it in a InputStreamReader and use BufferedReader#lines() to consume it line by line.
try (InputStream resource = Example.class.getResourceAsStream("resource")) {
List<String> doc =
new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(resource,
StandardCharsets.UTF_8)).lines().collect(Collectors.toList());
}

You can use Apache Commons IOUtils#readLines:
List<String> doc = IOUtils.readLines(inputStream, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

Java reading a file different methods

It seems that there are many, many ways to read text files in Java (BufferedReader, DataInputStream etc.) My personal favorite is Scanner with a File in the constructor (it's just simpler, works with mathy data processing better, and has familiar syntax).
Boris the Spider also mentioned Channel and RandomAccessFile.
Can someone explain the pros and cons of each of these methods? To be specific, when would I want to use each?
(edit) I think I should be specific and add that I have a strong preference for the Scanner method. So the real question is, when wouldn't I want to use it?

Lets start at the beginning. The question is what do you want to do?
It's important to understand what a file actually is. A file is a collection of bytes on a disc, these bytes are your data. There are various levels of abstraction above that that Java provides:
File(Input|Output)Stream - read these bytes as a stream of byte.
File(Reader|Writer) - read from a stream of bytes as a stream of char.
Scanner - read from a stream of char and tokenise it.
RandomAccessFile - read these bytes as a searchable byte[].
FileChannel - read these bytes in a safe multithreaded way.
On top of each of those there are the Decorators, for example you can add buffering with BufferedXXX. You could add linebreak awareness to a FileWriter with PrintWriter. You could turn an InputStream into a Reader with an InputStreamReader (currently the only way to specify character encoding for a Reader).
So - when wouldn't I want to use it [a Scanner]?.
You would not use a Scanner if you wanted to, (these are some examples):
Read in data as bytes
Read in a serialized Java object
Copy bytes from one file to another, maybe with some filtering.
It is also worth nothing that the Scanner(File file) constructor takes the File and opens a FileInputStream with the platform default encoding - this is almost always a bad idea. It is generally recognised that you should specify the encoding explicitly to avoid nasty encoding based bugs. Further the stream isn't buffered.
So you may be better off with
try (final Scanner scanner = new Scanner(new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream())), "UTF-8") {
//do stuff
}
Ugly, I know.
It's worth noting that Java 7 Provides a further layer of abstraction to remove the need to loop over files - these are in the Files class:
byte[] Files.readAllBytes(Path path)
List<String> Files.readAllLines(Path path, Charset cs)
Both these methods read the entire file into memory, which might not be appropriate. In Java 8 this is further improved by adding support for the new Stream API:
Stream<String> Files.lines(Path path, Charset cs)
Stream<Path> Files.list(Path dir)
For example to get a Stream of words from a Path you can do:
final Stream<String> words = Files.lines(Paths.get("myFile.txt")).
flatMap((in) -> Arrays.stream(in.split("\\b")));

SCANNER:
can parse primitive types and strings using regular expressions.
A Scanner breaks its input into tokens using a delimiter pattern, which by default matches whitespace. The resulting tokens may then be converted into values of different types.more can be read at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Scanner.html
DATA INPUT STREAM:
Lets an application read primitive Java data types from an underlying input stream in a machine-independent way. An application uses a data output stream to write data that can later be read by a data input stream.DataInputStream is not necessarily safe for multithreaded access. Thread safety is optional and is the responsibility of users of methods in this class. More can be read at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/io/DataInputStream.html
BufferedReader:
Reads text from a character-input stream, buffering characters so as to provide for the efficient reading of characters, arrays, and lines.The buffer size may be specified, or the default size may be used. The default is large enough for most purposes.In general, each read request made of a Reader causes a corresponding read request to be made of the underlying character or byte stream. It is therefore advisable to wrap a BufferedReader around any Reader whose read() operations may be costly, such as FileReaders and InputStreamReaders. For example,
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("foo.in"));
will buffer the input from the specified file. Without buffering, each invocation of read() or readLine() could cause bytes to be read from the file, converted into characters, and then returned, which can be very inefficient.Programs that use DataInputStreams for textual input can be localized by replacing each DataInputStream with an appropriate BufferedReader.More detail are at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/io/BufferedReader.html

NOTE: This approach is outdated. As Boris points out in his comment. I will leave it here for history, but you should use methods available in JDK.
It depends on what kind of operation you are doing and the size of the file you are reading.
In most of the cases, I recommend using commons-io for small files.
byte[] data = FileUtils.readFileToByteArray(new File("myfile"));
You can read it as string or character array...
Now, you are handing big files, or changing parts of a file directly on the filesystem, then the best it to use a RandomAccessFile and potentially even a FileChannel to do "nio" style.

Using BufferedReader
BufferedReader reader;
char[] buffer = new char[10];
reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("FILE_PATH"));
//or
reader = Files.newBufferedReader(Path.get("FILE_PATH"));
while (reader.read(buffer) != -1) {
System.out.print(new String(buffer));
buffer = new char[10];
}
//or
while (buffReader.ready()) {
System.out.println(
buffReader.readLine());
}
reader.close();
Using FileInputStream-Read Binary Files to Bytes
FileInputStream fis;
byte[] buffer = new byte[10];
fis = new FileInputStream("FILE_PATH");
//or
fis=Files.newInoutSream(Paths.get("FILE_PATH"))
while (fis.read(buffer) != -1) {
System.out.print(new String(buffer));
buffer = new byte[10];
}
fis.close();
Using Files– Read Small File to List of Strings
List<String> allLines = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("FILE_PATH"));
for (String line : allLines) {
System.out.println(line);
}
Using Scanner – Read Text File as Iterator
Scanner scanner = new Scanner(new File("FILE_PATH"));
while (scanner.hasNextLine()) {
System.out.println(scanner.nextLine());
}
scanner.close();
Using RandomAccessFile-Reading Files in Read-Only Mode
RandomAccessFile file = new RandomAccessFile("FILE_PATH", "r");
String str;
while ((str = file.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(str);
}
file.close();
Using Files.lines-Reading lines as stream
Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(Paths.get("FILE_PATH") .forEach(s -> System.out.println(s));
Using FileChannel-for increasing performance by using off-heap memory furthermore using MappedByteBuffer
FileInputStream i = new FileInputStream(("FILE_PATH");
ReadableByteChannel r = i.getChannel();
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(16 * 1024);
while (r.read(buffer) != -1) {
buffer.flip();
while (buffer.hasRemaining()) {
System.out.print((char) buffer.get());
}
buffer.clear();
}

Error when reading non-English language character from file

I am building an app where users have to guess a secret word. I have *.txt files in assets folder. The problem is that words are in Albanian language. Our language uses letters like "ë" and "ç", so whenever I try to read from the file some word containing any of those characters I get some wicked symbol and I can not implement string.compare() for these characters. I have tried many options with UTF-8, changed Eclipse setting but still the same error.
I wold really appreciate if someone has got any advice.
The code I use to read the files is:
AssetManager am = getAssets();
strOpenFile = "fjalet.txt";
InputStream fins = am.open(strOpenFile);
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins));
ArrayList<String> stringList = new ArrayList<String>();
while ((aDataRow = reader.readLine()) != null) {
aBuffer += aDataRow + "\n";
stringList.add(aDataRow);
}
Otherwise the code works fine, except for mentioned characters

It seems pretty clear that the default encoding that is in force when you create the InputStreamReader does not match the file.
If the file you are trying to read is UTF-8, then this should work:
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins, "UTF-8"));
If the file is not UTF-8, then that won't work. Instead you should use the name of the file's true encoding. (My guess is that it is in ISO/IEC_8859-1 or ISO/IEC_8859-16.)
Once you have figured out what the file's encoding really is, you need to try to understand why it does not correspond to your Java platform's default encoding ... and then make a pragmatic decision on what to do about it. (Should you hard-wire the encoding into your application ... as above? Should you make it a configuration property or command parameter? Should you change the default encoding? Should you change the file?)

You need to determine the character encoding that was used when creating the file, and specify this encoding when reading it. If it's UTF-8, for example, use
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins, "UTF-8"));
or
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins, StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
if you're under Java 7.
Text editors like Notepad++ have good heuristics to guess what the encoding of a file is. Try opening it with such an editor and see which encoding it has guessed (if the characters appear correctly).

You should know encoding of the file.
InputStream class reads file binary. Although you can interpet input as character, it will be implicit guessing, which may be wrong.
InputStreamReader class converts binary to chars. But it should know character set.
You should use the following version to feed it by character set.
UPDATE
Don't suggest you have UTF-8 encoded file, which may be wrong. Here in Russia we have such encodings as CP866, WIN1251 and KOI8, which are all differ from UTF8. Probably you have some popular Albanian encoding of text files. Check your OS setting to guess.

Write string to output stream

I have several output listeners that are implementing OutputStream.
It can be either a PrintStream writing to stdout or to a File, or it can be writing to memory or any other output destination; therefore, I specified OutputStream as (an) argument in the method.
Now, I have received the String. What is the best way to write to streams here?
Should I just use Writer.write(message.getBytes())? I can give it bytes, but if the destination stream is a character stream then will it convert automatically?
Do I need to use some bridge streams here instead?

Streams (InputStream and OutputStream) transfer binary data. If you want to write a string to a stream, you must first convert it to bytes, or in other words encode it. You can do that manually (as you suggest) using the String.getBytes(Charset) method, but you should avoid the String.getBytes() method, because that uses the default encoding of the JVM, which can't be reliably predicted in a portable way.
The usual way to write character data to a stream, though, is to wrap the stream in a Writer, (often a PrintWriter), that does the conversion for you when you call its write(String) (or print(String)) method. The corresponding wrapper for InputStreams is a Reader.
PrintStream is a special OutputStream implementation in the sense that it also contain methods that automatically encode strings (it uses a writer internally). But it is still a stream. You can safely wrap your stream with a writer no matter if it is a PrintStream or some other stream implementation. There is no danger of double encoding.
Example of PrintWriter with OutputStream:
try (PrintWriter p = new PrintWriter(new FileOutputStream("output-text.txt", true))) {
p.println("Hello");
} catch (FileNotFoundException e1) {
e1.printStackTrace();
}

OutputStream writes bytes, String provides chars. You need to define Charset to encode string to byte[]:
outputStream.write(string.getBytes(Charset.forName("UTF-8")));
Change UTF-8 to a charset of your choice.

You can create a PrintStream wrapping around your OutputStream and then just call it's print(String):
final OutputStream os = new FileOutputStream("/tmp/out");
final PrintStream printStream = new PrintStream(os);
printStream.print("String");
printStream.close();

By design it is to be done this way:
OutputStream out = ...;
try (Writer w = new OutputStreamWriter(out, "UTF-8")) {
w.write("Hello, World!");
} // or w.close(); //close will auto-flush

Wrap your OutputStream with a PrintWriter and use the print methods on that class. They take in a String and do the work for you.

You may use Apache Commons IO:
try (OutputStream outputStream = ...) {
IOUtils.write("data", outputStream, "UTF-8");
}
IOUtils.write(String data, OutputStream output, String encoding)