How do I created tab delimited data file in Java?

By Wayan in IO 0 Comment

The following code snippet show you how to create a tab delimited data file in Java. The tab character is represented using the \t sequence of characters, a backslash (\) character followed by the t letter. In the code below we start by defining some data that we are going to write to the file.

We create a PrintWriter object, passes a BufferedWritter created using the Files.newBufferedWriter() method. The countries.dat is the file name where the data will be written. Because we are using the try-with-resources the PrintWriter and the related object will be closed automatically when the file operation finishes.

package org.kodejava.io;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class TabDelimitedDataFile {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        List<String[]> data = new ArrayList<>();
        data.add(new String[]{"Afghanistan", "AF", "AFG", "004", "Asia"});
        data.add(new String[]{"Åland Islands", "AX", "ALA", "248", "Europe"});
        data.add(new String[]{"Albania", "AL", "ALB", "008", "Europe"});
        data.add(new String[]{"Algeria", "DZ", "DZA", "012", "Africa"});
        data.add(new String[]{"American Samoa", "AS", "ASM", "016", "Polynesia"});
        data.add(new String[]{"Andorra", "AD", "AND", "020", "South Europe"});
        data.add(new String[]{"Angola", "AO", "AGO", "024", "Africa"});
        data.add(new String[]{"Anguilla", "AI", "AIA", "660", "Americas"});
        data.add(new String[]{"Antarctica", "AQ", "ATA", "010", ""});
        data.add(new String[]{"Argentina", "AR", "ARG", "032", "Americas"});

        try (PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(
                Files.newBufferedWriter(Paths.get("countries.dat")))) {
            for (String[] row : data) {
                writer.printf("%1$20s\t%2$3s\t\t%3$3s\t\t%4$3s\t\t%5$s",
                        row[0], row[1], row[2], row[3], row[4]);
                writer.println();
            }
        }
    }
}

The output of the code snippet above are:

         Afghanistan     AF     AFG     004     Asia
       Åland Islands     AX     ALA     248     Europe
             Albania     AL     ALB     008     Europe
             Algeria     DZ     DZA     012     Africa
      American Samoa     AS     ASM     016     Polynesia
             Andorra     AD     AND     020     South Europe
              Angola     AO     AGO     024     Africa
            Anguilla     AI     AIA     660     Americas
          Antarctica     AQ     ATA     010     
           Argentina     AR     ARG     032     Americas
Wayan
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