Thread: Searching for a word in a text file

"Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 0
at spellChecker.project1.SpellChecker.main(SpellCheck er.java:10)"

At line 10 the code uses an index (=0) into an array that is past the end of the array.
If there is not an element at index 0, that means the array is empty.

The code should test the length of the array using the .length attribute to make sure there are elements in the array BEFORE trying to index into the array.

What happens when the code is executed? Does it do what you want?

The error message says the error happened at line 10. So the test for the length of the array should be done before line 10.

Please edit your post and wrap your code with code tags:
[code=java]
YOUR CODE HERE
[/code]
to get highlighting and preserve formatting.

how can I check if the word is contained in the file?

Read the lines from the file into a String and use one of the String class's method to check if the String contains the word.

Something like this:
initialize variables
begin loop to read all lines of file
read line into String
check if String contains the word (uses a method of String class)
end loop

Ok, so you need to read the file, separate out the words and save them in a collection.
After that you read another file and search each line for one of the words in the collection.

Do those two steps one at a time. After the words are read into the collection, print it out so you can see if they are all there. For testing use small files with few words say 5 so its easy to sort through the debugging without hugh print outs.

How are the words stored in the file? The String class's split() method will separate the words in a String that are separated by some character like a space or a , (comma) which will put the words into an array from which they can be saved in a collection like an ArrayList.

If there is one word per line you won't need the split() method.
Read the lines/words and store them in the list.

Read the line from the file into a String and use one of Set's methods to add the String to the Set.

Why do you want to put the words into a Set?

nothing seems to be working.

Does the code read the lines from the file OK?
For testing, read each line and print it to see if the code works.
That is the first thing that must work.

When that works, then move to putting each word in the list.

how to code and put each word in the list

The list has some methods that are used to add items to it.
Define the list variable where all methods can access it at the class level,
create a new instance of the class and assign it to the variable
inside the loop where the words are read, use the class's method to add the word to the list

Yes that looks like it would be a place to store the words.

Can I load two files like this?

package spellChecker.project1;
 
 
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Scanner;
import java.util.Set;
 
public class SpellChecker{
 
 
 
 
	public static void main(String[] args) {
 
 
		String myFileName = "/Users/Stalin/Desktop/dictionary.txt";
		String user = "/Users/Stalin/Desktop/user.txt";
 
		Set<String> set = new HashSet <String>();
 
		System.out.println("Please enter the location of the file path: ");
		Scanner UserInput = new Scanner(System.in);
		user = UserInput.nextLine();
 
		try{
 
		 FileReader readMyFile = new FileReader(myFileName);
		 Scanner scanMyFile = new Scanner(readMyFile);
 
		 FileReader readMyFile1 = new FileReader(user);
		 Scanner scanMyFile1 = new Scanner(readMyFile1);
 
 
         while (scanMyFile.hasNextLine()) {
             String line = scanMyFile.nextLine();
             //System.out.println(line);
             set.add(line);
 
         }
 
         while (scanMyFile1.hasNextLine()){
        	 String line = scanMyFile1.nextLine();
        	 set.add(line);
         }
         scanMyFile.close();
         scanMyFile1.close();
         UserInput.close();
		}
		catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
 
 
	}
}