Parsing a fixed-width formatted file in Java

MattGrommes_3098 0
Viewed 58066

I've got a file from a vendor that has 115 fixed-width fields per line. How can I parse that file into the 115 fields so I can use them in my code?

My first thought is just to make constants for each field like NAME_START_POSITION and NAME_LENGTH and using substring. That just seems ugly, so I'm curious about better ways of doing this. None of the couple of libraries a Google search turned up seemed any better, either.

fixed-width parsing java
10 Answers

If your string is called inStr, convert it to a char array and use the String(char[], start, length) constructor

char[] intStrChar = inStr.toCharArray();
String charfirst10 = new String(intStrChar,0,9);
String char10to20 = new String(intStrChar,10,19);
user_65999210

Another library that can be used to parse a fixed width text source: https://github.com/org-tigris-jsapar/jsapar

Allows you to define a schema in xml or in code and parse fixed width text into java beans or fetch values from an internal format.

Disclosure: I am the author of the jsapar library. If it does not fulfill your needs, on this page you can find a comprehensive list of other parsing libraries. Most of them are only for delimited files but some can parse fixed width as well.

user_17375900
Related