Thread: Where did my char(s) go?! FileReader read(CharBuffer target) throwing file contents away...?

This seems to be such a straightforward procedure that I'm truly stumped as to why it's not working.

Overall, I'm writing a program to read files from a directory and scan each file to see if a user-input text string is in the file. I'm using java.util.regex.* classes to determine whether or not the input string is present - but that's not the problem.

The problem is reading the File (targetFile below) into a CharBuffer (which then becomes the input for the regex method).

Here's the relevant code:

        FileReader targetFileReader;
        try {
                targetFileReader = new FileReader(targetFile);
        }
        catch (FileNotFoundException FNFE) {
               ....        }
 
        int fileSize =(int)targetFile.length();
        Integer charsRead = 0;
        CharBuffer charBuff = CharBuffer.allocate(fileSize);
            try {
                charsRead = targetFileReader.read(charBuff);
            }
            catch (IOException IOE) {
                ...            }
 
        System.out.println("Characters read into buffer: " + charsRead.toString());
        Integer bufferLength = charBuff.length();
        System.out.println("Characters now in buffer: " + bufferLength.toString());

There are no exceptions thrown at any point, but the output is

Characters read into buffer: 87332 (for example)
Characters now in buffer: 0

Where did the contents of the CharBuffer go?!?!?

PS: Yes, I've done other tests which demonstrate that there really is nothing in the CharBuffer.

Originally Posted by copeg

See the API for CharBuffer and its parent class Buffer. Buffer's have positions, so for instance the length method of CharBuffer states:

If you've read in data, the position has changed to the number of characters read. Try resetting the position by calling rewind()

I knew it had to be something simple and stupid like this. It was the kind of thing I've run into more than once in Java, and always resolved in exactly this way.

This is undoubtedly why my other tests seemed to indicate that there was nothing in the CharBuffer.

Thanks!