How do I align string print out in left, right, center alignment?

The following code snippet will teach you how to align string in left, right or center alignment when you want to print out string to a console. We will print the string using the printf(String format, Object... args) method. The format specifier / parameter defines how the string will be formatted for output and the args is the value that will be formatted.

The format parameter / specifier include flags, width, precision and conversion-characters in the order shown below. The square brackets in the notation means the part is an optional parameter.

% [flags] [width] [.precision] conversion-character
Flags Description
- left-align the output, when not specified the default is to right-align
+ print (+) or (-) sign for numeric value
0 zero padded a numeric value
, comma grouping separator for number greater that 1000
space will output a (-) symbol for negative value and a space if positive
Conversion Description
s string, use capital S to uppercase the strings
c character, use capital C to uppercase the characters
d integer: byte, short, integer, long
f floating point number: float, double
n new line

Width: Defines the field width for printing out the value of argument. It also represents the minimum number of characters to
be printed out to the output.

Precision: For floating-point conversion the precision define the number of digits of precision in a floating point value. For string value this will extract the substring.

To center the string for output we use the StringUtils.center() method from the Apache Commons Lang library. This method will center-align the string str in a larger string of size using the default space character (‘ ‘). You can supply the third parameter to define your own space character / string.

package org.kodejava.lang;

import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils;

import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.Month;
import java.time.temporal.ChronoUnit;

public class StringAlignment {
    private static final Object[][] people = {
            {"Alice", LocalDate.of(2000, Month.JANUARY, 1)},
            {"Bob", LocalDate.of(1989, Month.DECEMBER, 15)},
            {"Carol", LocalDate.of(1992, Month.JULY, 24)},
            {"Ted", LocalDate.of(2006, Month.MARCH, 13)},
    };

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String nameFormat = "| %1$-20s | ";
        String dateFormat = " %2$tb %2$td, %2$tY  | ";
        String ageFormat = " %3$3s |%n";
        String format = nameFormat.concat(dateFormat).concat(ageFormat);
        String line = new String(new char[48]).replace('\0', '-');

        System.out.println(line);
        System.out.printf("|%s|%s|%s|%n",
                StringUtils.center("Name", 22),
                StringUtils.center("Birth Date", 16),
                StringUtils.center("Age", 6));
        System.out.println(line);

        for (Object[] data : people) {
            System.out.printf(format,
                    data[0], data[1],
                    ChronoUnit.YEARS.between((LocalDate) data[1], LocalDate.now()));
        }

        System.out.println(line);
    }
}

Here is the output of our code snippet above:

------------------------------------------------
|         Name         |   Birth Date   | Age  |
------------------------------------------------
| Alice                |  Jan 01, 2000  |   17 |
| Bob                  |  Dec 15, 1989  |   27 |
| Carol                |  Jul 24, 1992  |   24 |
| Ted                  |  Mar 13, 2006  |   10 |
------------------------------------------------

Maven Dependencies

<!-- https://search.maven.org/remotecontent?filepath=org/apache/commons/commons-lang3/3.12.0/commons-lang3-3.12.0.jar -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
    <version>3.12.0</version>
</dependency>

Maven Central

How do I sort file names by their extension?

To sort file names by their extension, we can use the ExtensionFileComparator class from the Apache Commons IO library. This class provides a couple instances of comparator such as:

Comparator Description
EXTENSION_COMPARATOR Case sensitive extension comparator
EXTENSION_REVERSE Reverse case sensitive extension comparator
EXTENSION_INSENSITIVE_COMPARATOR Case insensitive extension comparator
EXTENSION_INSENSITIVE_REVERSE Reverse case insensitive extension comparator
EXTENSION_SYSTEM_COMPARATOR System sensitive extension comparator
EXTENSION_SYSTEM_REVERSE Reverse system sensitive path comparator

The following snippet shows you how to use the first two comparators listed above.

package org.kodejava.commons.io;

import org.apache.commons.io.FilenameUtils;

import static org.apache.commons.io.comparator.ExtensionFileComparator.*;

import java.io.File;
import java.util.Arrays;

public class FileSortByExtension {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        File file = new File(".");

        // Excludes directory in the list
        File[] files = file.listFiles(File::isFile);

        if (files != null) {
            // Sort in ascending order.
            Arrays.sort(files, EXTENSION_COMPARATOR);
            FileSortByExtension.displayFileOrder(files);

            // Sort in descending order.
            Arrays.sort(files, EXTENSION_REVERSE);
            FileSortByExtension.displayFileOrder(files);
        }
    }

    private static void displayFileOrder(File[] files) {
        System.out.printf("%-20s | %s%n", "Name", "Ext");
        System.out.println("--------------------------------");
        for (File file : files) {
            System.out.printf("%-20s | %s%n", file.getName(),
                    FilenameUtils.getExtension(file.getName()));
        }
        System.out.println();
    }
}

The result of the code snippet:

Name                 | Ext
--------------------------------
README               | 
lipsum.doc           | doc
lipsum.docx          | docx
data.html            | html
contributors.txt     | txt
pom.xml              | xml

Name                 | Ext
--------------------------------
pom.xml              | xml
contributors.txt     | txt
data.html            | html
lipsum.docx          | docx
lipsum.doc           | doc
README               | 

Maven Dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
    <version>2.16.1</version>
</dependency>

Maven Central

How do I sort files and directories based on their size?

In this example, you will learn how to sort files and directories based on their size. Using the Apache Commons IO, we can utilize the SizeFileComparator class. This class provides some instances to sort file size such as:

Comparator Description
SIZE_COMPARATOR Size comparator instance – directories are treated as zero size
SIZE_REVERSE Reverse size comparator instance – directories are treated as zero size
SIZE_SUMDIR_COMPARATOR Size comparator instance which sums the size of a directory’s contents
SIZE_SUMDIR_REVERSE Reverse size comparator instance which sums the size of a directory’s contents

Now let’s jump to the code snippet below:

package org.kodejava.commons.io;

import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;

import java.io.File;
import java.util.Arrays;

import static org.apache.commons.io.comparator.SizeFileComparator.*;

public class FileSortBySize {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        File dir = new File(".");
        File[] files = dir.listFiles();

        if (files != null) {
            // Sort files in ascending order based on file size.
            System.out.println("Ascending order.");
            Arrays.sort(files, SIZE_COMPARATOR);
            FileSortBySize.displayFileOrder(files, false);

            // Sort files in descending order based on file size
            System.out.println("Descending order.");
            Arrays.sort(files, SIZE_REVERSE);
            FileSortBySize.displayFileOrder(files, false);

            // Sort files in ascending order based on file / directory
            // size
            System.out.println("Ascending order with directories.");
            Arrays.sort(files, SIZE_SUMDIR_COMPARATOR);
            FileSortBySize.displayFileOrder(files, true);

            // Sort files in descending order based on file / directory
            // size
            System.out.println("Descending order with directories.");
            Arrays.sort(files, SIZE_SUMDIR_REVERSE);
            FileSortBySize.displayFileOrder(files, true);
        }
    }

    private static void displayFileOrder(File[] files, boolean displayDirectory) {
        for (File file : files) {
            if (!file.isDirectory()) {
                System.out.printf("%-25s - %s%n", file.getName(),
                        FileUtils.byteCountToDisplaySize(file.length()));
            } else if (displayDirectory) {
                long size = FileUtils.sizeOfDirectory(file);
                String friendlySize = FileUtils.byteCountToDisplaySize(size);
                System.out.printf("%-25s - %s%n", file.getName(),
                        friendlySize);
            }
        }
        System.out.println("------------------------------------");
    }
}

In the code snippet above we use a couple method from the FileUtils class such as the FileUtils.sizeOfDirectory() to calculate the size of a directory and FileUtils.byteCountToDisplaySize() to create human-readable file size.

The result of the code snippet:

Ascending order.
.editorconfig             - 389 bytes
kodejava.iml              - 868 bytes
pom.xml                   - 1 KB
------------------------------------
Descending order.
pom.xml                   - 1 KB
kodejava.iml              - 868 bytes
.editorconfig             - 389 bytes
------------------------------------
Ascending order with directories.
.editorconfig             - 389 bytes
src                       - 851 bytes
kodejava.iml              - 868 bytes
pom.xml                   - 1 KB
apache-commons-example    - 8 KB
hibernate-example         - 29 KB
.idea                     - 85 KB
------------------------------------
Descending order with directories.
.idea                     - 85 KB
hibernate-example         - 29 KB
apache-commons-example    - 8 KB
pom.xml                   - 1 KB
kodejava.iml              - 868 bytes
src                       - 851 bytes
.editorconfig             - 389 bytes

Maven Dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
    <version>2.16.1</version>
</dependency>

Maven Central

How do I read text file content line by line to a List of Strings using Commons IO?

The following example show how to use the Apache Commons IO library to read a text file line by line to a List of String. In the code snippet below we will read the contents of a file called sample.txt using FileUtils class. We use FileUtils.readLines() method to read the contents line by line and return the result as a List of Strings.

package org.kodejava.commons.io;

import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;

public class ReadFileToListSample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Create a file object of sample.txt
        File file = new File("README.md");

        try {
            List<String> contents = FileUtils.readLines(file, "UTF-8");

            // Iterate the result to print each line of the file.
            for (String line : contents) {
                System.out.println(line);
            }
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Maven Dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
    <version>2.16.1</version>
</dependency>

Maven Central

How do I generate random string?

package org.kodejava.security;

import java.security.SecureRandom;
import java.util.Random;

public class RandomString {
    public static final String SOURCES =
            "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890";

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        RandomString rs = new RandomString();
        System.out.println(rs.generateString(new Random(), SOURCES, 10));
        System.out.println(rs.generateString(new Random(), SOURCES, 10));
        System.out.println(rs.generateString(new SecureRandom(), SOURCES, 15));
        System.out.println(rs.generateString(new SecureRandom(), SOURCES, 15));
    }

    /**
     * Generate a random string.
     *
     * @param random     the random number generator.
     * @param characters the characters for generating string.
     * @param length     the length of the generated string.
     */
    public String generateString(Random random, String characters, int length) {
        char[] text = new char[length];
        for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
            text[i] = characters.charAt(random.nextInt(characters.length()));
        }
        return new String(text);
    }
}

Example string produced by the code snippets are:

bJGjSgoy7G
SoeTjBy83s
IolJZtkttJixAVY
ZOvQnICNcwcCdJ8