How can I read a large text file line by line using Java?

Question

I need to read a large text file of around 5-6 GB line by line using Java.

How can I do this quickly?

Answer 1

The clear way to achieve this,

For example:

If you have dataFile.txt on your current directory

import java.io.*;
import java.util.Scanner;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

public class readByLine
{
    public readByLine() throws FileNotFoundException
    {
        Scanner linReader = new Scanner(new File("dataFile.txt"));

        while (linReader.hasNext())
        {
            String line = linReader.nextLine();
            System.out.println(line);
        }
        linReader.close();

    }

    public static void main(String args[])  throws FileNotFoundException
    {
        new readByLine();
    }
}

The output like as below,

Answer 2

For reading a file with Java 8

package com.java.java8;

import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
import java.util.stream.Stream;

/**
 * The Class ReadLargeFile.
 *
 * @author Ankit Sood Apr 20, 2017
 */
public class ReadLargeFile {

    /**
     * The main method.
     *
     * @param args
     *            the arguments
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            Stream<String> stream = Files.lines(Paths.get("C:\\Users\\System\\Desktop\\demoData.txt"));
            stream.forEach(System.out::println);
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

Look at this blog:

• Java Read File Line by Line - Java Tutorial

The buffer size may be specified, or the default size may be used. The default is large enough for most purposes.

// Open the file
FileInputStream fstream = new FileInputStream("textfile.txt");
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fstream));

String strLine;

//Read File Line By Line
while ((strLine = br.readLine()) != null)   {
  // Print the content on the console
  System.out.println (strLine);
}

//Close the input stream
fstream.close();

Answer 4

I documented and tested 10 different ways to read a file in Java and then ran them against each other by making them read in test files from 1KB to 1GB. Here are the fastest 3 file reading methods for reading a 1GB test file.

Note that when running the performance tests I didn't output anything to the console since that would really slow down the test. I just wanted to test the raw reading speed.

1) java.nio.file.Files.readAllBytes()

Tested in Java 7, 8, 9. This was overall the fastest method. Reading a 1GB file was consistently just under 1 second.

import java.io..File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;

public class ReadFile_Files_ReadAllBytes {
  public static void main(String [] pArgs) throws IOException {
    String fileName = "c:\\temp\\sample-1GB.txt";
    File file = new File(fileName);

    byte [] fileBytes = Files.readAllBytes(file.toPath());
    char singleChar;
    for(byte b : fileBytes) {
      singleChar = (char) b;
      System.out.print(singleChar);
    }
  }
}

2) java.nio.file.Files.lines()

This was tested successfully in Java 8 and 9 but it won't work in Java 7 because of the lack of support for lambda expressions. It took about 3.5 seconds to read in a 1GB file which put it in second place as far as reading larger files.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.util.stream.Stream;

public class ReadFile_Files_Lines {
  public static void main(String[] pArgs) throws IOException {
    String fileName = "c:\\temp\\sample-1GB.txt";
    File file = new File(fileName);

    try (Stream linesStream = Files.lines(file.toPath())) {
      linesStream.forEach(line -> {
        System.out.println(line);
      });
    }
  }
}

3) BufferedReader

Tested to work in Java 7, 8, 9. This took about 4.5 seconds to read in a 1GB test file.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.IOException;

public class ReadFile_BufferedReader_ReadLine {
  public static void main(String [] args) throws IOException {
    String fileName = "c:\\temp\\sample-1GB.txt";
    FileReader fileReader = new FileReader(fileName);

    try (BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(fileReader)) {
      String line;
      while((line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(line);
      }
    }
  }

You can find the complete rankings for all 10 file reading methods here.

Answer 5

By using the org.apache.commons.io package, it gave more performance, especially in legacy code which uses Java 6 and below.

Java 7 has a better API with fewer exceptions handling and more useful methods:

LineIterator lineIterator = null;
try {
    lineIterator = FileUtils.lineIterator(new File("/home/username/m.log"), "windows-1256"); // The second parameter is optionnal
    while (lineIterator.hasNext()) {
        String currentLine = lineIterator.next();
        // Some operation
    }
}
finally {
    LineIterator.closeQuietly(lineIterator);
}

Maven

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/commons-io/commons-io -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
    <version>2.6</version>
</dependency>

Answer 6

Once Java 8 is out (March 2014) you'll be able to use streams:

try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(Paths.get(filename), Charset.defaultCharset())) {
  lines.forEachOrdered(line -> process(line));
}

Printing all the lines in the file:

try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(file, Charset.defaultCharset())) {
  lines.forEachOrdered(System.out::println);
}