Reading and Writing using a Large Random Access File

I have a delimited file where each line is of a varying length and can have a varying amount of delimiters. I need to access a random line and replace it with a new line that may be shorter or longer in length. Because the file is large (20MB+), I need to do this as efficiently as possible.

I started with trying to write a simple program that would take a line number, a string, and a file, move to the designated line number, and replace the existing line with the new string. I wanted to scan through the file and after n number of end line characters were reached, write the string after that position.

For example, the program below is supposed to take a file like this:

orange,orange
apple,red
peach,pink

and change it to this:

orange,orange
grapes,green
peach,pink

The output of my program is below. As you can see, I can’t even seem to get a char to read properly. What am I doing wrong?

Path=F:\Eclipse\Workspace\FlashCards\test.txt
Char at 0=?
Char at 2=?
.
.
.
Char at 28=?
Char at 30=?
Reached EOF!
Line 1 File Position=0
Done

import java.io.File;
import java.io.RandomAccessFile;

public class FileIOTest {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
        String entry = "grapes,green";
        int line = 1;
        File file = new File("test.txt");
        RandomAccessFile f = new RandomAccessFile(file, "rw");

        long filePointer=0;

        System.out.println("Path="+file.getCanonicalPath());
        try{
            int n=0;
            while(n<line){
                long p = f.getFilePointer();
                char c = f.readChar();
                System.out.println("Char at "+p+"="+c);
                if(c=='\n'){
                    n++;        
                }

            }
        }catch(Exception e){
            System.out.println("Reached EOF!");
        }
        System.out.println("Line 1 File Position="+filePointer);
        f.seek(filePointer);
        f.writeBytes(entry);
        f.seek(0);
        f.close();
        System.out.println("Done");
    }
}

When you call readChar(), your program is actually reading two bytes - since a char is two bytes in size. readChar() should only be used when the value has been written using writeChar().

RandomAccessFile is not a good class for this problem. It cannot add to a file or remove from a file - it can only replace bytes with an equal amount of bytes. That’s not what you specified. Check out FileReader and FileWriter instead. You can’t read from and write to the same file at the same time though, so you have to either a) read everything first, or b) write to a new file first, then delete the original and rename the new file.

After doing some more research on Random Access Files I just scrapped that idea. I ended up doing what you suggested instead and just reading the whole file in, working with it in memory, and saving it at the end.