How to open a .dat file in java program

Question

I was handed some data in a file with an .dat extension. I need to read this data in a java program and build the data into some objects we defined. I tried the following, b

Answer 1

That entirely depends on what sort of file the .dat is. Unfortunately, .dat is often used as a generic extension for a data file. It could be binary, in which case you could use FileInputStream fstream = new FileInputStream(new File("news.dat")); and call read() to get bytes from the file, or text, in which case you could use BufferedReader buff = new BufferedInputReader(new FileInputStream(new File("news.dat"))); and call readLine() to get each line of text. [edit]Or it could be Java objects in which case what BalusC said.[/edit]

In both cases, you'd then need to know what format the file was in to divide things up and get meaning from it, although this would be much easier if it was text as it could be done by inspection.