Creating a simple re-uusable cmd line class - suggestions for improvement

Question

Hi all,
My first post in this forum. I have got development experience in C/C++ and am moving into Java / OOP programming style. As part of my experimentation I have been trying to create a generic class that I can use to handle all the cmd input. So far I have come up with a working (but badly written) class :
package ******; // package name hidden.
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
public class cmdinput {
     private static BufferedReader reader;
     private String data;
     public cmdinput(){
          System.out.println("Creating Cmd Input Subsystem...");
          reader = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader(System.in));
          System.out.print("Done... Please Enter Your Input: ");
     public String getData(){
          try{
               do{
                    data = reader.readLine();
                    if(data == null || data == "quit"){
                         System.out.println("done");
                         return null;
                    return data;
               }while (data != "quit");
          catch (IOException ioe){
               ioe.printStackTrace();
               System.out.println("Exiting");
               return null;
}The basic idea is that the class should be able to handle all BufferedReader operations including closing it elegantly when the code exits. I need a way of closing the BufferedReader object that makes sure that once all the data processing (i.e. echoing back string variable, until "quit: is read in) is finished it closes the stream and the object. I tried using a finally block to close the reader stream, but that would mean it would close the reader everytime the getData() method returns a value, which is not what I want. Ideally I would like a way to signal externally, that now I am finished using the input operations, please close all active input streams.
Any suggestions/comments appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
radiorx

Answer 1

Apologies for asking a stupid question. I found out that a class exists to do the exact same thing that I am trying to do: Scanner
I always wanted to know the equivalent C/C++ scanf() method in Java! Guess I know one more thing about Java.
Edited by: radiorx on Mar 2, 2008 2:42 PM