Thread: [Help] How to read each column of data into a separate one dimensional array

The list below has a list of stuff for my program that I need to read in. How do you read in the data column by column rather than row by row? I have to have 4 separate arrays to read in the years (ignore the months), pressures, wind speeds, and names. Idk how to do that though.

1980 Aug	945	100	Allen
1983 Aug	962	100	Alicia
1984 Sep	949	100	Diana
1985 Jul	1002	65	Bob
1985 Aug	987	80	Danny
1985 Sep	959	100	Elena
1985 Sep	942	90	Gloria
1985 Oct	971	75	Juan
1985 Nov	967	85	Kate
1986 Jun	990	75	Bonnie
1986 Aug	990	65	Charley
1987 Oct	993	65	Floyd
1988 Sep	984	70	Florence
1989 Aug	986	70	Chantal
1989 Sep	934	120	Hugo
1989 Oct	983	75	Jerry
1991 Aug	962	90	Bob
1992 Aug	922	145	Andrew
1993 Aug	960	100	Emily
1995 Aug	973	85	Erin
1995 Oct	942	100	Opal
1996 Jul	974	90	Bertha
1996 Sep	954	100	Fran
1997 Jul	984	70	Danny
1998 Aug	964	95	Bonnie
1998 Sep	987	70	Earl
1998  Sep	964	90	Georges
1999 Aug	951	100	Bret
1999 Sep	956	90	Floyd
1999 Oct	987	70	Irene
2002 Oct	963	80	Lili
2003 Jul	979	80	Claudette
2003 Sep	957	90	Isabel
2004 Aug	972	70	Alex
2004 Aug	941	130	Charley
2004 Aug	985	65	Gaston
2004 Sep	960	90	Frances
2004 Sep	946	105	Ivan
2004 Sep	950	105	Jeanne
2005 Jul	992	65	Cindy
2005 Jul	930	130	Dennis
2005 Jul	929	135	Emily
2005 Aug	975	85	Irene
2005 Aug	902	150	Katrina
2005 Sep	960	100	Maria
2005 Sep	979	80	Nate
2005 Sep	976	80	Ophelia
2005 Sep	985	70	Phillipe
2005 Sep	897	150	Rita
2005 Sep	979	70	Stan
2005 Sep	987	65	Vince
2005 Sep	882	150	Wilma
2005 Sep	960	100	Beta
2005 Sep	979	75	Epsilon
2006 Aug	995	65	Ernesto
2006 Sep	972	80	Florence
2006 Sep	955	105	Gordon
2006 Sep	954	110	Helene
2006 Sep	985	75	Isaac

The most straight forward thing to do is to read the file from top to bottom. Most likely you will use a BufferedReader. (There's an example of usage at java2s.com)

I have to have 4 separate arrays to read in the years (ignore the months), pressures, wind speeds, and names.

Consider a small child confronted with a huge jumbled heap of building blocks and charged with the task organising them by colour into tidy piles. Now they might go through the large heap finding all the red ones, then start again and find all the green ones and continue in that way until all the tidy piles had been constructed. But an infinitely more efficient approach would be to take the blocks one by one from the large heap - in the order they are most easily found - and place them into the appropriate tidy pile.

Perhaps you could take the same approach. Read the file line by line, extract the elements you are interested in from the line, and place each into the appropriate array. (Of course you would have constructed all four arrays first.)

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I guess it's a homework problem. But it's one that reflects badly on the teacher. (Feel free to link him or her to this page.)

The thing is that the various elements of each line belong together. "Aug? Which Aug?!" - "Aug, 1980" etc. It is together that the various elements will be sorted, or searched for etc. There is a logical intuition that cries out against putting the data into separate arrays. The teacher's business is to foster that intuition.