Scanner -- how to count spaces a part of a string

Question

I'm fooling around with Scanner in a little program just to teach myself. Right now, when given the chance to enter data, anything after a space is ignored, so, for example, if one enters "John Smith" for a name entry, on printout it only says "John." How can I fix this?

Answer 1

Melanie_Green wrote:
Opps forgot to close the scannerUmmm... As a general rule of thumb... If you open it, close it... and conversely: If you didn't open it, don't close it... any other way lies madness, like having to check if the stream has been closed by something else before every write. Yeck!
System.in, out, and err are opened and closed for you automatically... so you shouldn't (IMHO) close a scanner on System.in, because it would close the underlying System.in stream... which probably isn't what you wanted to do anyway.
And (just my humble opinion) I'd regard that "input loop" as "an abuse of loops"... because it's more complicated than it needs to be. However...
If one where to delegate the "simple attributes" of a "bean-like" class to a Map... Hmmm... the below code concept still isn't (IMHO) actually useful for real apps, because it's limited to String attributes only, but it was an interesting learning exercise none-the-less... and one could conceivably extend it to support all the primitive types, but what's the point... then you may as well just write simple old beans, forget about all the "clever stuff" under the hood, and get on with what the real problems ;-)
package forums;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Scanner;
* A base class for simple Data Transfer Objects with only String attributes.
abstract class DTO
  private static final Scanner SCANNER = new Scanner(System.in);
  protected final String CLASS_NAME;
  private final String[] ATTRIBUTE_NAMES;
  private final String PROMPT_FORMAT;
  private Map<String, String> attributes = new HashMap<String, String>();
  public DTO(String[] attributeNames) {
    this.CLASS_NAME = getClassNameOnly(this.getClass());
    this.ATTRIBUTE_NAMES = attributeNames;
    this.PROMPT_FORMAT = "    %-"+maxLengthOf(attributeNames)+"s : ";
  public void enterAttributes() {
    System.out.println("Please enter the attributes for "+CLASS_NAME+" : ");
    for (String attributeName : ATTRIBUTE_NAMES) {
      String prompt = String.format(PROMPT_FORMAT,attributeName);
      String attributeValue = read(prompt);
      attributes.put(attributeName, attributeValue);
  @Override
  public String toString() {
    StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
    result.append("<").append(CLASS_NAME).append(">\n");
    for (Map.Entry<String,String> attr : attributes.entrySet()) {
      result.append("<").append(attr.getKey()).append(">");
      result.append(attr.getValue());
      result.append("</").append(attr.getKey()).append(">\n");
    result.append("</").append(CLASS_NAME).append(">\n");
    return result.toString();
  // ========== HELPER METHODS ==========
  // NOTE: in a real system these would be in various Utilz classes.
  // read from krc.utilz.io.Conzole
  private static String read(String prompt) {
    System.out.print(prompt);
    return SCANNER.nextLine().trim();
  // read from krc.utilz.Clazz
  private static String getClassNameOnly(Class clazz) {
    String fullName = clazz.getName();
    return fullName.substring(fullName.lastIndexOf('.')+1);
  // read from krc.utilz.Stringz
  private static int maxLengthOf(String[] names) {
    int max = names[0].length();
    for(int i=1; i<names.length; i++) {
      max = Math.max(max, names.length());
return max;
* A Person object
class Person extends DTO
private static final String[] ATTRIBUTE_NAMES = {
"FirstName", "LastName", "Street", "State"
public Person() {
super(ATTRIBUTE_NAMES);
public class PersonDatabase3
public static void main (String[] args) {
try {
Person person = new Person();
person.enterAttributes();
System.out.println(person);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
Cheers all. Keith.
Edited by: corlettk on 21/06/2009 16:47 ~~ Clearer.