How to compare the data in a highscore file(.txt) for a game?

Question

As mention above,i would like to check the highscore everytime the game has finished,and updates it, what classes should be used? FileReader, FileWriter, or Properties? If so, how the codes is likely to be? Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

I would discourage you from using a plain old text file to save your high scores in. The obvious reason being is that your little brother can just edit the file in notepad, then run to you and taunt, "I've got the highest score, nyah nyah nyah!"
If you must do it, I would use PrintWriter and simply print out each line as needed. Reading the lines back into the game is only a tad more difficult, but you can simply read in each line as a String, and store each String in an array, or a Vector if you don't know how many high scores you will have.
In the long run, you should create a serializable object that contains either the Vector or the Array of scores and instruct the object to save itself or load itself as needed. This is essentially how Properties work except you have more control over the internal data format.
On second thought, Properties would work just fine, but you cannot guarantee that the scores will be saved in a particular order - you would have to add an additional routine to read in each Property (specifically, each name/score pair) and then sort them. Once you do that, there's no real difference between a Properties file and rolling your own Serializable array.