Trying to Scan in a List of Names Using a Delimiter from a Text File

Question

Hello everyone,
I tried posting this question onto [Codecall Forums|http://forum.codecall.net/java-help/16064-trying-scan-list-names-using-delimiter-text-file.html] for an answer, but nobody really helped to solve this problem, so I'm reposting it here.
I'm trying to solve this problem on the Euler Project for practice. For the first part of the problem, I am supposed to scan in names in the following format: "name1","name2","name3". To solve this, I wrote the following code:
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
public class AlphabeticalSort
     public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException
          //import the file
          Scanner input = new Scanner(new File("names.txt"));
          input.useDelimiter("[\",]");
          System.out.println(input.delimiter());
          //scan it for the length of the array
          int n = 0;
          while (input.hasNext())
               input.next();
               n++;
          System.out.println(n);
          //import the names into the array
          Scanner input2 = new Scanner(new File("names.txt"));
          input2.useDelimiter("[\",]");
          String[] names = new String[n];
          for (int i=0; i<n; i++)
               names[i] = input2.next();
               System.out.println(names);
}However, when I tested this with a file containing "BOB","STEVE","MARK", n equaled 7 and my output was the names each separated by two empty lines.  There are other methods I can use to solve this problem, but I would really like to know why my delimiters are not working so I can use them in the future.
Thanks,
helixed
Edited by: helixed on May 14, 2009 10:52 PM                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Answer 1

Take a look at [Quantifiers in Java regex|http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/regex/quant.html].
I believe "[\",]+"{code} will get you the results you need.
Edited by: nogoodatcoding on May 15, 2009 11:54 AM