Find a line in a file and remove it

Question

I\'m looking for a small code snippet that will find a line in file and remove that line (not content but line) but could not find. So for example I have in a file following

Answer 1

This solution may not be optimal or pretty, but it works. It reads in an input file line by line, writing each line out to a temporary output file. Whenever it encounters a line that matches what you are looking for, it skips writing that one out. It then renames the output file. I have omitted error handling, closing of readers/writers, etc. from the example. I also assume there is no leading or trailing whitespace in the line you are looking for. Change the code around trim() as needed so you can find a match.

File inputFile = new File("myFile.txt");
File tempFile = new File("myTempFile.txt");

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inputFile));
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile));

String lineToRemove = "bbb";
String currentLine;

while((currentLine = reader.readLine()) != null) {
    // trim newline when comparing with lineToRemove
    String trimmedLine = currentLine.trim();
    if(trimmedLine.equals(lineToRemove)) continue;
    writer.write(currentLine + System.getProperty("line.separator"));
}
writer.close(); 
reader.close(); 
boolean successful = tempFile.renameTo(inputFile);

Answer 2

Here is the complete Class. In the below file "somelocation" refers to the actual path of the file.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;



public class FileProcess
{


    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
    {
        File inputFile = new File("C://somelocation//Demographics.txt");
        File tempFile = new File("C://somelocation//Demographics_report.txt");

        BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inputFile));
        BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile));

        String currentLine;

        while((currentLine = reader.readLine()) != null) {
            if(null!=currentLine && !currentLine.equalsIgnoreCase("BBB")){
                writer.write(currentLine + System.getProperty("line.separator"));
            }
        }
        writer.close(); 
        reader.close(); 
        boolean successful = tempFile.renameTo(inputFile);
        System.out.println(successful);
    }

}

Answer 3

This solution reads in an input file line by line, writing each line out to a StringBuilder variable. Whenever it encounters a line that matches what you are looking for, it skips writing that one out. Then it deletes file content and put the StringBuilder variable content.

public void removeLineFromFile(String lineToRemove, File f) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException{
    //Reading File Content and storing it to a StringBuilder variable ( skips lineToRemove)
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    try (Scanner sc = new Scanner(f)) {
        String currentLine;
        while(sc.hasNext()){
            currentLine = sc.nextLine();
            if(currentLine.equals(lineToRemove)){
                continue; //skips lineToRemove
            }
            sb.append(currentLine).append("\n");
        }
    }
    //Delete File Content
    PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(f);
    pw.close();

    BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(f, true));
    writer.append(sb.toString());
    writer.close();
}

Answer 4

This solution requires the Apache Commons IO library to be added to the build path. It works by reading the entire file and writing each line back but only if the search term is not contained.

public static void removeLineFromFile(File targetFile, String searchTerm)
        throws IOException
{
    StringBuffer fileContents = new StringBuffer(
            FileUtils.readFileToString(targetFile));
    String[] fileContentLines = fileContents.toString().split(
            System.lineSeparator());

    emptyFile(targetFile);
    fileContents = new StringBuffer();

    for (int fileContentLinesIndex = 0; fileContentLinesIndex < fileContentLines.length; fileContentLinesIndex++)
    {
        if (fileContentLines[fileContentLinesIndex].contains(searchTerm))
        {
            continue;
        }

        fileContents.append(fileContentLines[fileContentLinesIndex] + System.lineSeparator());
    }

    FileUtils.writeStringToFile(targetFile, fileContents.toString().trim());
}

private static void emptyFile(File targetFile) throws FileNotFoundException,
        IOException
{
    RandomAccessFile randomAccessFile = new RandomAccessFile(targetFile, "rw");

    randomAccessFile.setLength(0);
    randomAccessFile.close();
}

Answer 5

    public static void deleteLine() throws IOException {
        RandomAccessFile file = new RandomAccessFile("me.txt", "rw");
        String delete;
        String task="";
        byte []tasking;
        while ((delete = file.readLine()) != null) {
            if (delete.startsWith("BAD")) {
                continue;
            }
            task+=delete+"\n";
        }
        System.out.println(task);
        BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("me.txt"));
        writer.write(task);
        file.close();
        writer.close();
    }

Answer 6

Try this:

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

    File file = new File("file.csv");

    CSVReader csvFileReader = new CSVReader(new FileReader(file));

    List<String[]> list = csvFileReader.readAll();

    for (int i = 0; i < list.size(); i++) {
        String[] filter = list.get(i);
        if (filter[0].equalsIgnoreCase("bbb")) {
            list.remove(i);
        }
    }
    csvFileReader.close();
    CSVWriter csvOutput = new CSVWriter(new FileWriter(file));

    csvOutput.writeAll(list);
    csvOutput.flush();

    csvOutput.close();
}