Retrieving two dimensional arrays from a text file.

Question

Good evening
I am having a problem with reading a text file, and putting this info into a 2D array to be put into a table.
I have the table already(but no code to add rows to the table incase the array increases)
The array is called Product[a][ b ]
where a is the product number(the row), and b are details about this product.
The file i want to be read looks like this:
data.txt
CPU|AMD|X2, 64bit, 2GHz|$150|9
Video card|NVidia|7800 GTX 256MB|$400|4
e.g. product[2][4] would equal 4
Basically: Type, manufacturer, specifications, price, amount in stock.
the "splitter" or "field terminator" is "|"
This is what i want it to do:
Store fileline into single string,
split string and put it in product[ j ][ i ]
repeat with next lines until nothing is read anymore.
This is the code I have so far:
try{
        FileReader textFileReader = new FileReader("C://BACKUP2//data.txt");
        BufferedReader textReader = new BufferedReader(textFileReader);
        for(int j=0; j<0; j++){
             for(int i=0; i<6; i++){ //i starts at 0, condition: i is under 6, 1 is added to i at each loop/update.             
                   ProductT = textReader.readLine();
                   textReader.close();
                   for(String Product[j] : ProductT.split("|")){ //this line is completly wrong, but i don't know how else to do it.
     // for counting for the number of columns
catch (IOException e) {System.out.println(e);}
I don't even think this code makes any bloody sense, I don't know if I'm approaching it correctly.
Would anyone be gracious enough to give me a helping hand and tell me what/how to change my code?
from what I see, the problem lies less in the loops, but more in the splitting of the string. no function seems to like 2D arrays :(

Answer 1

So this is where I stand:
     //Reading
    try{
        FileReader textFileReader = new FileReader("C://BACKUP2//data.txt");
        BufferedReader textReader = new BufferedReader(textFileReader);
        for(int j=0; j>0; j++){ // this will go on forever now or what?
// yes, this will loop forever, which is fine as long as you break out of the loop when you reach the end of the file (which is indicated by textReader.readLine() returning null)
             // replace the for(String currentField : ProductT.split("|")) loop with this one
             //for(int i=0; i<6; i++){ //i starts at 0, condition: i is under 6, 1 is added to i at update.       
                  String inputline = textReader.readLine();    // read a single line from the file each time through the loop
                  //while (inputline != null) {
                        if (inputline != null) {    // check if the end of the file has been reached
                       //ProductT = textReader.readLine(); //put to single string
                   //textReader.close(); //shut it off    // move this line to the end of processing, you don't want to close the file until you've read everything from it.
                   //for(String currentField : ProductT.split("|")){   //Split string...      according to JBuilder "The local variable currentField is never read"
                         // switch this loop to use the regular for(  ;  ;  ) type, that way you will have another counter to use as the second index in the product assignment
                                     //currentField = Product[j];
                    product[i][] = currentField; // use the index of the second loop as the second index here
else {
break; // break out of the loop when end of file is reached
     //} // the for i etc. end here
} // End for j et cetera...
     } //end Try
catch (IOException e) {System.out.println(e);}
//cut the crap
// close the reader here
ok - so I am not quite sure about what you mean here
"Assign each of the 5 fields to the five [][j]
positions of the array. "
should i put 5 "fors" in there? - currently the
program is compiling - although they do not appear in
the table.I put comments in the code that should answer those questions.
The code for the table is
Object[][] data = {
          {Product[0][0], Product[0][1],
               Product[0][2], Product[0][3], Product[0][4]},
               {Product[1][0], Product[1][1],
Product[1][2], Product[1][3],
uct[1][3], Product[1][4]},
                      {Product[2][0], Product[2][1],
Product[2][2], Product[2][3],
ct[2][3], Product[2][4]},
                          {Product[3][0], Product[3][1],
Product[3][2],
Product[3][2], Product[3][3], Product[3][4]},
                {Product[4][0], Product[4][1],
Product[4][2],
Product[4][2], Product[4][3], Product[4][4]},
;If I do not declare any of these strings (e.g. I have
only declared Product[0-2][] oldschol style) an error
occurs, telling me that
Caused by:
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 3
     at data.<init>(data.java:112)
     ... 5 more
When you declare product, you'll need to give it a size for both dimensions. The first dimension will be the number of lines to be read from the file. You'll need to know this before allocating the array, so either count them in the file, (if that's good enough for this assignment) or loop through the file once before reading it to count the lines. The second dimension of the array will be 5, since that's how many fields each line has.
btw; do I give those duke stars when all problems of
my life(currently: reading the two dimensional
string) have been resolved?I don't know about [i]all the problems of your life, but when the topic of the thread has been solved, then give them to whoever helped. :)