Java text parsing

Question

Hi all!
I'm a Java beginner and how I have to parse a text file of the form:
attribute1 1|2|443|554|56
attribute2 someString
attribute3 someOtherString
...and so on...
I have to change the value of one of the attributes.
Could you tell me how to overwrite this attribute.
Thanx,
Pesho

Answer 1

There are some very powerful String tools, which you might want to look at. The first is the Scanner Class http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/Scanner.html , which helps you to tokenize your Strings. It also helps you with regular expressions, which you should look up in the Java tutorial and here: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/regex/package-frame.html
A simpler version which is easier to handle is the StringTokenizer Class:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/StringTokenizer.html
About changing the file: you just can't change a few bits of your file. You have to read the whole file into some data structure, change the data structure and save it back to disk.