Java FileInputStream

Question

I am trying to use a FileInputStream to essentially read in a text file, and then output it in a different text file. However, I always get very strange characters when I do this. I'm sure it's some simple mistake I'm making, thanks for any help or pointing me in the right direction. Here's what I've got so far.

    File sendFile = new File(fileName);
    FileInputStream fileIn = new FileInputStream(sendFile);
    byte buf[] = new byte[1024];
    while(fileIn.read(buf) > 0) {
        System.out.println(buf);
    }

The file it is reading from is just a big text file of regular ASCII characters. Whenever I do the system.out.println, however, I get the output [B@a422ede. Any ideas on how to make this work? Thanks

Answer 1

This happens because you are printing a byte array object itself, rather than printing its content. You should construct a String from the buffer and a length, and print that String instead. The constructor to use for this is

String s = new String(buf, 0, len, charsetName);

Above, len should be the value returned by the call of the read() method. The charsetName should represent the encoding used by the underlying file.