Scanner.next() and Scanner.nextLine()

Question

I have the following code:

Scanner in = new Scanner (System.in);
String[] data = new String[5];

System.out.println(\"Please, enter the name of the customer orde         


        

Answer 1

Don't use next() and nextLine() together if you don't know what you're doing, it easily results in errors. next() reads the next input token, nextLine() all tokens until next line. So if you have inputs like this:

John\nSquirrels

(\n is newline character)

The first next() returns "John" and leaves us

\nSquirrels

After which a nextLine() is facing no tokens before the end of the line, so you get an empty String instead of "Squirrels".

Answer 2

This should work:

    Scanner in = new Scanner (System.in);
    String[] data = new String[5];

    System.out.println("Please, enter the name of the customer ordering:");
    data[0] = in.nextLine();
    System.out.println("Please, enter the assembly details: ");
    data[1] = in.nextLine();
    System.out.println("Please, enter the assembly id:");
    data[2] = in.nextLine();
    System.out.println("Please, enter the date the assembly was ordered (MM-DD-YYYY):");
    data[3] = in.nextLine();
    in.close();

You should be using nextLine() and not next() to read each line from console

Answer 3

next() -- Finds and returns the next complete token from this scanner nextLine() --Advances this scanner past the current line and returns the input that was skipped.

From the java API documentation.