What is a new line, really?

Question

Continuing my voyage into Java's I/O space...
Okay, this might sound like a really stupid question, but I'm all new to programming. :)
But what is a new line, really!? I ask since I've gotten the impression that there is more than one "kind" of new line.
I've written the code below to count the number of lines in a file. It seems to work but what if a file contains a different "new line flavor?
    int linesInFile() throws IOException
        FileReader fileIn = null;
        Scanner scanner = null;
        int numberOfLines = 0;
        try {
            fileIn = new FileReader("/users/stefan/test/test2.txt");
            BufferedReader bufferedIn = new BufferedReader(fileIn);
            scanner = new Scanner(bufferedIn);
            scanner.useDelimiter("\n");
            while ( scanner.hasNext() )
                System.out.println(scanner.next());
                numberOfLines++;
        finally
            if ( fileIn != null )
                scanner.close();
                fileIn.close();
        return numberOfLines;
    } By the way. I'm closing the Scanner and the FileReader - but not the BufferedReader. I think it will close when the try statement ends - is that correct?
Kind regards,
Stefan

Answer 1

You're right in that there's more than one type of newline - depending on your system it can be a carriage return followed by a newline character, just a newline character, or some other more uncommon combinations. As it happens, Windows' Notepad is just about the only application that doesn't handle other types of linebreaks correctly.
You can get the line break on the current system by using System.getProperty("line.separator"), I believe. Using the methods provided by BufferedReader such as "newline()" rather than outputting "\n" characters is usually recommended.