Number of lines in a file in Java

Question

I use huge data files, sometimes I only need to know the number of lines in these files, usually I open them up and read them line by line until I reach the end of the file

I was wondering if there is a smarter way to do that

Answer 1

This is the fastest version I have found so far, about 6 times faster than readLines. On a 150MB log file this takes 0.35 seconds, versus 2.40 seconds when using readLines(). Just for fun, linux' wc -l command takes 0.15 seconds.

public static int countLinesOld(String filename) throws IOException {
    InputStream is = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(filename));
    try {
        byte[] c = new byte[1024];
        int count = 0;
        int readChars = 0;
        boolean empty = true;
        while ((readChars = is.read(c)) != -1) {
            empty = false;
            for (int i = 0; i < readChars; ++i) {
                if (c[i] == '\n') {
                    ++count;
                }
            }
        }
        return (count == 0 && !empty) ? 1 : count;
    } finally {
        is.close();
    }
}

EDIT, 9 1/2 years later: I have practically no java experience, but anyways I have tried to benchmark this code against the LineNumberReader solution below since it bothered me that nobody did it. It seems that especially for large files my solution is faster. Although it seems to take a few runs until the optimizer does a decent job. I've played a bit with the code, and have produced a new version that is consistently fastest:

public static int countLinesNew(String filename) throws IOException {
    InputStream is = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(filename));
    try {
        byte[] c = new byte[1024];

        int readChars = is.read(c);
        if (readChars == -1) {
            // bail out if nothing to read
            return 0;
        }

        // make it easy for the optimizer to tune this loop
        int count = 0;
        while (readChars == 1024) {
            for (int i=0; i<1024;) {
                if (c[i++] == '\n') {
                    ++count;
                }
            }
            readChars = is.read(c);
        }

        // count remaining characters
        while (readChars != -1) {
            System.out.println(readChars);
            for (int i=0; i<readChars; ++i) {
                if (c[i] == '\n') {
                    ++count;
                }
            }
            readChars = is.read(c);
        }

        return count == 0 ? 1 : count;
    } finally {
        is.close();
    }
}

Benchmark resuls for a 1.3GB text file, y axis in seconds. I've performed 100 runs with the same file, and measured each run with System.nanoTime(). You can see that countLinesOld has a few outliers, and countLinesNew has none and while it's only a bit faster, the difference is statistically significant. LineNumberReader is clearly slower.

Answer 2

I have implemented another solution to the problem, I found it more efficient in counting rows:

try
(
   FileReader       input = new FileReader("input.txt");
   LineNumberReader count = new LineNumberReader(input);
)
{
   while (count.skip(Long.MAX_VALUE) > 0)
   {
      // Loop just in case the file is > Long.MAX_VALUE or skip() decides to not read the entire file
   }

   result = count.getLineNumber() + 1;                                    // +1 because line index starts at 0
}

Answer 3

The accepted answer has an off by one error for multi line files which don't end in newline. A one line file ending without a newline would return 1, but a two line file ending without a newline would return 1 too. Here's an implementation of the accepted solution which fixes this. The endsWithoutNewLine checks are wasteful for everything but the final read, but should be trivial time wise compared to the overall function.

public int count(String filename) throws IOException {
    InputStream is = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(filename));
    try {
        byte[] c = new byte[1024];
        int count = 0;
        int readChars = 0;
        boolean endsWithoutNewLine = false;
        while ((readChars = is.read(c)) != -1) {
            for (int i = 0; i < readChars; ++i) {
                if (c[i] == '\n')
                    ++count;
            }
            endsWithoutNewLine = (c[readChars - 1] != '\n');
        }
        if(endsWithoutNewLine) {
            ++count;
        } 
        return count;
    } finally {
        is.close();
    }
}

Answer 4

With java-8, you can use streams:

try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(path, Charset.defaultCharset())) {
  long numOfLines = lines.count();
  ...
}

Answer 5

The answer with the method count() above gave me line miscounts if a file didn't have a newline at the end of the file - it failed to count the last line in the file.

This method works better for me:

public int countLines(String filename) throws IOException {
    LineNumberReader reader  = new LineNumberReader(new FileReader(filename));
int cnt = 0;
String lineRead = "";
while ((lineRead = reader.readLine()) != null) {}

cnt = reader.getLineNumber(); 
reader.close();
return cnt;
}

Answer 6

I know this is an old question, but the accepted solution didn't quite match what I needed it to do. So, I refined it to accept various line terminators (rather than just line feed) and to use a specified character encoding (rather than ISO-8859-n). All in one method (refactor as appropriate):

public static long getLinesCount(String fileName, String encodingName) throws IOException {
    long linesCount = 0;
    File file = new File(fileName);
    FileInputStream fileIn = new FileInputStream(file);
    try {
        Charset encoding = Charset.forName(encodingName);
        Reader fileReader = new InputStreamReader(fileIn, encoding);
        int bufferSize = 4096;
        Reader reader = new BufferedReader(fileReader, bufferSize);
        char[] buffer = new char[bufferSize];
        int prevChar = -1;
        int readCount = reader.read(buffer);
        while (readCount != -1) {
            for (int i = 0; i < readCount; i++) {
                int nextChar = buffer[i];
                switch (nextChar) {
                    case '\r': {
                        // The current line is terminated by a carriage return or by a carriage return immediately followed by a line feed.
                        linesCount++;
                        break;
                    }
                    case '\n': {
                        if (prevChar == '\r') {
                            // The current line is terminated by a carriage return immediately followed by a line feed.
                            // The line has already been counted.
                        } else {
                            // The current line is terminated by a line feed.
                            linesCount++;
                        }
                        break;
                    }
                }
                prevChar = nextChar;
            }
            readCount = reader.read(buffer);
        }
        if (prevCh != -1) {
            switch (prevCh) {
                case '\r':
                case '\n': {
                    // The last line is terminated by a line terminator.
                    // The last line has already been counted.
                    break;
                }
                default: {
                    // The last line is terminated by end-of-file.
                    linesCount++;
                }
            }
        }
    } finally {
        fileIn.close();
    }
    return linesCount;
}

This solution is comparable in speed to the accepted solution, about 4% slower in my tests (though timing tests in Java are notoriously unreliable).

Answer 7

I tested the above methods for counting lines and here are my observations for Different methods as tested on my system

File Size : 1.6 Gb Methods:

1. Using Scanner : 35s approx
2. Using BufferedReader : 5s approx
3. Using Java 8 : 5s approx
4. Using LineNumberReader : 5s approx

Moreover Java8 Approach seems quite handy :

Files.lines(Paths.get(filePath), Charset.defaultCharset()).count()
[Return type : long]

Answer 8

/**
 * Count file rows.
 *
 * @param file file
 * @return file row count
 * @throws IOException
 */
public static long getLineCount(File file) throws IOException {

    try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(file.toPath())) {
        return lines.count();
    }
}

Tested on JDK8_u31. But indeed performance is slow compared to this method:

/**
 * Count file rows.
 *
 * @param file file
 * @return file row count
 * @throws IOException
 */
public static long getLineCount(File file) throws IOException {

    try (BufferedInputStream is = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(file), 1024)) {

        byte[] c = new byte[1024];
        boolean empty = true,
                lastEmpty = false;
        long count = 0;
        int read;
        while ((read = is.read(c)) != -1) {
            for (int i = 0; i < read; i++) {
                if (c[i] == '\n') {
                    count++;
                    lastEmpty = true;
                } else if (lastEmpty) {
                    lastEmpty = false;
                }
            }
            empty = false;
        }

        if (!empty) {
            if (count == 0) {
                count = 1;
            } else if (!lastEmpty) {
                count++;
            }
        }

        return count;
    }
}

Tested and very fast.

Answer 9

A straight-forward way using Scanner

static void lineCounter (String path) throws IOException {

        int lineCount = 0, commentsCount = 0;

        Scanner input = new Scanner(new File(path));
        while (input.hasNextLine()) {
            String data = input.nextLine();

            if (data.startsWith("//")) commentsCount++;

            lineCount++;
        }

        System.out.println("Line Count: " + lineCount + "\t Comments Count: " + commentsCount);
    }

Answer 10

I concluded that wc -l:s method of counting newlines is fine but returns non-intuitive results on files where the last line doesn't end with a newline.

And @er.vikas solution based on LineNumberReader but adding one to the line count returned non-intuitive results on files where the last line does end with newline.

I therefore made an algo which handles as follows:

@Test
public void empty() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(0, count(""));
}

@Test
public void singleNewline() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(1, count("\n"));
}

@Test
public void dataWithoutNewline() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(1, count("one"));
}

@Test
public void oneCompleteLine() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(1, count("one\n"));
}

@Test
public void twoCompleteLines() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(2, count("one\ntwo\n"));
}

@Test
public void twoLinesWithoutNewlineAtEnd() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(2, count("one\ntwo"));
}

@Test
public void aFewLines() throws IOException {
    assertEquals(5, count("one\ntwo\nthree\nfour\nfive\n"));
}

And it looks like this:

static long countLines(InputStream is) throws IOException {
    try(LineNumberReader lnr = new LineNumberReader(new InputStreamReader(is))) {
        char[] buf = new char[8192];
        int n, previousN = -1;
        //Read will return at least one byte, no need to buffer more
        while((n = lnr.read(buf)) != -1) {
            previousN = n;
        }
        int ln = lnr.getLineNumber();
        if (previousN == -1) {
            //No data read at all, i.e file was empty
            return 0;
        } else {
            char lastChar = buf[previousN - 1];
            if (lastChar == '\n' || lastChar == '\r') {
                //Ending with newline, deduct one
                return ln;
            }
        }
        //normal case, return line number + 1
        return ln + 1;
    }
}

If you want intuitive results, you may use this. If you just want wc -l compatibility, simple use @er.vikas solution, but don't add one to the result and retry the skip:

try(LineNumberReader lnr = new LineNumberReader(new FileReader(new File("File1")))) {
    while(lnr.skip(Long.MAX_VALUE) > 0){};
    return lnr.getLineNumber();
}

Answer 11

How about using the Process class from within Java code? And then reading the output of the command.

Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("wc -l " + yourfilename);
p.waitFor();

BufferedReader b = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
String line = "";
int lineCount = 0;
while ((line = b.readLine()) != null) {
    System.out.println(line);
    lineCount = Integer.parseInt(line);
}

Need to try it though. Will post the results.

Answer 12

This funny solution works really good actually!

public static int countLines(File input) throws IOException {
    try (InputStream is = new FileInputStream(input)) {
        int count = 1;
        for (int aChar = 0; aChar != -1;aChar = is.read())
            count += aChar == '\n' ? 1 : 0;
        return count;
    }
}

Answer 13

It seems that there are a few different approaches you can take with LineNumberReader.

I did this:

int lines = 0;

FileReader input = new FileReader(fileLocation);
LineNumberReader count = new LineNumberReader(input);

String line = count.readLine();

if(count.ready())
{
    while(line != null) {
        lines = count.getLineNumber();
        line = count.readLine();
    }
    
    lines+=1;
}
    
count.close();

System.out.println(lines);

Even more simply, you can use the Java BufferedReader lines() Method to return a stream of the elements, and then use the Stream count() method to count all of the elements. Then simply add one to the output to get the number of rows in the text file.

As example:

FileReader input = new FileReader(fileLocation);
LineNumberReader count = new LineNumberReader(input);

int lines = (int)count.lines().count() + 1;
    
count.close();

System.out.println(lines);

Answer 14

On Unix-based systems, use the wc command on the command-line.

Answer 15

Only way to know how many lines there are in file is to count them. You can of course create a metric from your data giving you an average length of one line and then get the file size and divide that with avg. length but that won't be accurate.

Answer 16

If you don't have any index structures, you'll not get around the reading of the complete file. But you can optimize it by avoiding to read it line by line and use a regex to match all line terminators.

Answer 17

Best Optimized code for multi line files having no newline('\n') character at EOF.

/**
 * 
 * @param filename
 * @return
 * @throws IOException
 */
public static int countLines(String filename) throws IOException {
    int count = 0;
    boolean empty = true;
    FileInputStream fis = null;
    InputStream is = null;
    try {
        fis = new FileInputStream(filename);
        is = new BufferedInputStream(fis);
        byte[] c = new byte[1024];
        int readChars = 0;
        boolean isLine = false;
        while ((readChars = is.read(c)) != -1) {
            empty = false;
            for (int i = 0; i < readChars; ++i) {
                if ( c[i] == '\n' ) {
                    isLine = false;
                    ++count;
                }else if(!isLine && c[i] != '\n' && c[i] != '\r'){   //Case to handle line count where no New Line character present at EOF
                    isLine = true;
                }
            }
        }
        if(isLine){
            ++count;
        }
    }catch(IOException e){
        e.printStackTrace();
    }finally {
        if(is != null){
            is.close();    
        }
        if(fis != null){
            fis.close();    
        }
    }
    LOG.info("count: "+count);
    return (count == 0 && !empty) ? 1 : count;
}

Answer 18

Scanner with regex:

public int getLineCount() {
    Scanner fileScanner = null;
    int lineCount = 0;
    Pattern lineEndPattern = Pattern.compile("(?m)$");  
    try {
        fileScanner = new Scanner(new File(filename)).useDelimiter(lineEndPattern);
        while (fileScanner.hasNext()) {
            fileScanner.next();
            ++lineCount;
        }   
    }catch(FileNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return lineCount;
    }
    fileScanner.close();
    return lineCount;
}

Haven't clocked it.

Answer 19

if you use this

public int countLines(String filename) throws IOException {
    LineNumberReader reader  = new LineNumberReader(new FileReader(filename));
    int cnt = 0;
    String lineRead = "";
    while ((lineRead = reader.readLine()) != null) {}

    cnt = reader.getLineNumber(); 
    reader.close();
    return cnt;
}

you cant run to big num rows, likes 100K rows, because return from reader.getLineNumber is int. you need long type of data to process maximum rows..