Reading a specific line from a text file in Java

Question

Is there any method to read a specific line from a text file ? In the API or Apache Commons. Something like :

String readLine(File file, int lineNumber)
         


        

Answer 1

Not that I'm aware of.

Be aware that there's no particular indexing on files as to where the line starts, so any utility method would be exactly as efficient as:

BufferedReader r = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
for (int i = 0; i < lineNumber - 1; i++)
{
   r.readLine();
}
return r.readLine();

(with appropriate error-handling and resource-closing logic, of course).