Number of lines in a file in Java

Question

I use huge data files, sometimes I only need to know the number of lines in these files, usually I open them up and read them line by line until I reach the end of the file<

Answer 1

/**
 * Count file rows.
 *
 * @param file file
 * @return file row count
 * @throws IOException
 */
public static long getLineCount(File file) throws IOException {

    try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(file.toPath())) {
        return lines.count();
    }
}

Tested on JDK8_u31. But indeed performance is slow compared to this method:

/**
 * Count file rows.
 *
 * @param file file
 * @return file row count
 * @throws IOException
 */
public static long getLineCount(File file) throws IOException {

    try (BufferedInputStream is = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(file), 1024)) {

        byte[] c = new byte[1024];
        boolean empty = true,
                lastEmpty = false;
        long count = 0;
        int read;
        while ((read = is.read(c)) != -1) {
            for (int i = 0; i < read; i++) {
                if (c[i] == '\n') {
                    count++;
                    lastEmpty = true;
                } else if (lastEmpty) {
                    lastEmpty = false;
                }
            }
            empty = false;
        }

        if (!empty) {
            if (count == 0) {
                count = 1;
            } else if (!lastEmpty) {
                count++;
            }
        }

        return count;
    }
}

Tested and very fast.

Answer 2

Best Optimized code for multi line files having no newline('\n') character at EOF.

/**
 * 
 * @param filename
 * @return
 * @throws IOException
 */
public static int countLines(String filename) throws IOException {
    int count = 0;
    boolean empty = true;
    FileInputStream fis = null;
    InputStream is = null;
    try {
        fis = new FileInputStream(filename);
        is = new BufferedInputStream(fis);
        byte[] c = new byte[1024];
        int readChars = 0;
        boolean isLine = false;
        while ((readChars = is.read(c)) != -1) {
            empty = false;
            for (int i = 0; i < readChars; ++i) {
                if ( c[i] == '\n' ) {
                    isLine = false;
                    ++count;
                }else if(!isLine && c[i] != '\n' && c[i] != '\r'){   //Case to handle line count where no New Line character present at EOF
                    isLine = true;
                }
            }
        }
        if(isLine){
            ++count;
        }
    }catch(IOException e){
        e.printStackTrace();
    }finally {
        if(is != null){
            is.close();    
        }
        if(fis != null){
            fis.close();    
        }
    }
    LOG.info("count: "+count);
    return (count == 0 && !empty) ? 1 : count;
}

Answer 3

I tested the above methods for counting lines and here are my observations for Different methods as tested on my system

File Size : 1.6 Gb Methods:

1. Using Scanner : 35s approx
2. Using BufferedReader : 5s approx
3. Using Java 8 : 5s approx
4. Using LineNumberReader : 5s approx

Moreover Java8 Approach seems quite handy :

Files.lines(Paths.get(filePath), Charset.defaultCharset()).count()
[Return type : long]

Answer 4

Only way to know how many lines there are in file is to count them. You can of course create a metric from your data giving you an average length of one line and then get the file size and divide that with avg. length but that won't be accurate.

Answer 5

How about using the Process class from within Java code? And then reading the output of the command.

Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("wc -l " + yourfilename);
p.waitFor();

BufferedReader b = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
String line = "";
int lineCount = 0;
while ((line = b.readLine()) != null) {
    System.out.println(line);
    lineCount = Integer.parseInt(line);
}

Need to try it though. Will post the results.

Answer 6

I concluded that wc -l:s method of counting newlines is fine but returns non-intuitive results on files where the last line doesn't end with a newline.

And @er.vikas solution based on LineNumberReader but adding one to the line count returned non-intuitive results on files where the last line does end with newline.

I therefore made an algo which handles as follows:

@Test
public void empty() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(0, count(""));
}

@Test
public void singleNewline() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(1, count("\n"));
}

@Test
public void dataWithoutNewline() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(1, count("one"));
}

@Test
public void oneCompleteLine() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(1, count("one\n"));
}

@Test
public void twoCompleteLines() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(2, count("one\ntwo\n"));
}

@Test
public void twoLinesWithoutNewlineAtEnd() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(2, count("one\ntwo"));
}

@Test
public void aFewLines() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(5, count("one\ntwo\nthree\nfour\nfive\n"));
}

And it looks like this:

static long countLines(InputStream is) throws IOException {
    try(LineNumberReader lnr = new LineNumberReader(new InputStreamReader(is))) {
        char[] buf = new char[8192];
        int n, previousN = -1;
        //Read will return at least one byte, no need to buffer more
        while((n = lnr.read(buf)) != -1) {
            previousN = n;
        }
        int ln = lnr.getLineNumber();
        if (previousN == -1) {
            //No data read at all, i.e file was empty
            return 0;
        } else {
            char lastChar = buf[previousN - 1];
            if (lastChar == '\n' || lastChar == '\r') {
                //Ending with newline, deduct one
                return ln;
            }
        }
        //normal case, return line number + 1
        return ln + 1;
    }
}

If you want intuitive results, you may use this. If you just want wc -l compatibility, simple use @er.vikas solution, but don't add one to the result and retry the skip:

try(LineNumberReader lnr = new LineNumberReader(new FileReader(new File("File1")))) {
    while(lnr.skip(Long.MAX_VALUE) > 0){};
    return lnr.getLineNumber();
}