Parsing string out of a txt file

Question

i cannot figure out how to do this, nothing i try am working... here is the data in my file:
                              ["Zerk"] = {
                                   22, -- [1]
                                   "", -- [2]
                                   "2008-01-13", -- [3]
                              ["Jaxa"] = {
                                   70, -- [1]
                                   "Apathy", -- [2]
                                   "2008-01-17", -- [3]
                              ["Sujong"] = {
                                   70, -- [1]
                                   "IRONY", -- [2]
                                   "2008-01-12", -- [3]
                              ["Henxins"] = {
                                   10, -- [1]
                                   "", -- [2]
                                   "2008-01-13", -- [3]
i am trying to get the name out of the line like ["name here"], and the file is 2 mb so i cannot do it by hand, so i was trying to write a java program to do it for me, but it is not wanting to work :( any help appreciated... i don't care how its coded, nor efficienty.

Answer 1

i solved it after messing around with it a little more
import java.applet.Applet;
import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.ArrayList;
public final class nameLeacher extends Applet {
     public String[] users;
     public int countLines() {
          int number = 1;
          try {
               FileReader input = new FileReader("c:/unform.txt");
               BufferedReader bufRead = new BufferedReader(input);
               String line; // String that holds current file line
               // Read first line
               line = bufRead.readLine();
               for (int i = 0; line != null; i++) {
                    line = bufRead.readLine();
                    number = i;
               bufRead.close();
          } catch (ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException e) {
          } catch (IOException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
          return number;
     public void load() {
          users = new String[countLines()];
          try {
               FileReader input = new FileReader("c:/unform.txt");
               BufferedReader bufRead = new BufferedReader(input);
               String line; // String that holds current file line
               // Read first line
               line = bufRead.readLine();
               for (int i = 0; line != null; i++) {
                    line = bufRead.readLine();
                    try {
                         if(line.contains("[\"")) {
                              users[i] = line.trim().replace("[","").replace("]","").replace("\"","").replace("=","").replace("{","");
                    } catch(NullPointerException e) {
               bufRead.close();
          } catch (ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException e) {
          } catch (IOException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
     public void paint(Graphics g) {
          load();
          String[] remove = {null};
          List list = new ArrayList(Arrays.asList(users));
          list.removeAll(new ArrayList(Arrays.asList(remove)));
          users = (String[]) list.toArray(new String[list.size()]);
          for(int i = 0; i < users.length; i++) {
               System.out.println(users);
     System.exit(1);
}Edited by: bobert5696 on Jan 20, 2008 11:03 AM