File Input Output in Scala (original) (raw)

• Home
• Languages
• Projects

1. Home
2. Programming Projects in Every Language
3. File Input Output
4. File Input Output in Scala

Published on 05 April 2019 (Updated: 15 May 2023)

Welcome to the File Input Output in Scala page! Here, you'll find the source code for this program as well as a description of how the program works.

Current Solution

import scala.io.Source
import java.io.{FileNotFoundException, IOException, File, FileOutputStream, PrintWriter}

object FileInputOutput {
  // reading file then write to stdout
  // write exception when fail
  def readFromFile(filename: String) {
    try {
      val buffer = Source.fromFile(filename)
      val lines = buffer.getLines

      lines.foreach(println)
      buffer.close
    } catch {
      case e: FileNotFoundException => println(s"File ${filename} does not exist.")
      case e: IOException => println(s"I/O Exception when reading from ${filename}.")
      case e: Throwable => println(s"Error <span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mrow><mi>e</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">.</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>t</mi><mi>M</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>s</mi><mi>s</mi><mi>a</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>e</mi></mrow><mi>w</mi><mi>h</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>n</mi><mi>r</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>a</mi><mi>d</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>n</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>f</mi><mi>r</mi><mi>o</mi><mi>m</mi></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex">{e.getMessage} when reading from </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:0.8889em;vertical-align:-0.1944em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord">.</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.10903em;">tM</span><span class="mord mathnormal">ess</span><span class="mord mathnormal">a</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span></span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.02691em;">w</span><span class="mord mathnormal">h</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord mathnormal">n</span><span class="mord mathnormal">re</span><span class="mord mathnormal">a</span><span class="mord mathnormal">d</span><span class="mord mathnormal">in</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.10764em;">f</span><span class="mord mathnormal">ro</span><span class="mord mathnormal">m</span></span></span></span>{filename}.")
    }
  }

  // write to file
  // stdout exception when fail
  def writeToFile(filename: String, contents: String) {
    try {
      val writer = new PrintWriter(new File(filename))
      writer.write(contents)
      writer.close
    } catch {
      case e: FileNotFoundException => println(s"Cannot write into file ${filename}.")
      case e: Throwable => println(s"Error <span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mrow><mi>e</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">.</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>t</mi><mi>M</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>s</mi><mi>s</mi><mi>a</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>e</mi></mrow><mi>w</mi><mi>h</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>n</mi><mi>w</mi><mi>r</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>t</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>n</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>t</mi><mi>o</mi><mi>f</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>l</mi><mi>e</mi></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex">{e.getMessage} when writing to file </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:0.8889em;vertical-align:-0.1944em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord">.</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.10903em;">tM</span><span class="mord mathnormal">ess</span><span class="mord mathnormal">a</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span></span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.02691em;">w</span><span class="mord mathnormal">h</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord mathnormal">n</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.02691em;">w</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.02778em;">r</span><span class="mord mathnormal">i</span><span class="mord mathnormal">t</span><span class="mord mathnormal">in</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal">t</span><span class="mord mathnormal">o</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.10764em;">f</span><span class="mord mathnormal">i</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.01968em;">l</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span></span></span></span>{filename}.")
    }
  }

  def main(args: Array[String]) {
    // write succesfully
    writeToFile("output.txt", "I am a string.\nI am also a string.\nScala is fun!\n")

    // read successfully
    readFromFile("output.txt")
  }
}

File Input Output in Scala was written by:

• rzuckerm

This article was written by:

• Jeremy Grifski
• rzuckerm
• Vee Ng

If you see anything you'd like to change or update, please consider contributing.

How to Implement the Solution

First of all let's look at the read / write functions as a whole, and their usages.

Read from a file

In many real world scenario, your program usually takes one of the two approaches when dealing with undeterministic I/O (also called side-effects): fail loudly or fail silently.

We want to fail loudly, i.e. throw exception, stop execution flow or output error as results, when the I/O is critical for the program to proceed.

  // reading file then write to stdout
  // write exception when fail
  def readFromFile(filename: String) {
    try {
      val buffer = Source.fromFile(filename)
      val lines = buffer.getLines

      lines.foreach(println)
      buffer.close
    } catch {
      case e: FileNotFoundException => println(s"File ${filename} does not exist.")
      case e: IOException => println(s"I/O Exception when reading from ${filename}.")
      case e: Throwable => println(s"Error <span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mrow><mi>e</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">.</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>t</mi><mi>M</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>s</mi><mi>s</mi><mi>a</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>e</mi></mrow><mi>w</mi><mi>h</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>n</mi><mi>r</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>a</mi><mi>d</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>n</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>f</mi><mi>r</mi><mi>o</mi><mi>m</mi></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex">{e.getMessage} when reading from </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:0.8889em;vertical-align:-0.1944em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord">.</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.10903em;">tM</span><span class="mord mathnormal">ess</span><span class="mord mathnormal">a</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span></span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.02691em;">w</span><span class="mord mathnormal">h</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord mathnormal">n</span><span class="mord mathnormal">re</span><span class="mord mathnormal">a</span><span class="mord mathnormal">d</span><span class="mord mathnormal">in</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.10764em;">f</span><span class="mord mathnormal">ro</span><span class="mord mathnormal">m</span></span></span></span>{filename}.")
    }
  }

Similar to many other language, scala.io.Source provides the ability to get a file into a buffer-like instance, in our case BufferedSource, using fromFile. Source is built-in with Java exceptions to let us know what causes the failure in opening / reading the file.

Since we are dealing with a text file, we can simply use getLines to convert BufferedSource to a Iterator[String]. We can also convert Iterator[String] to a List[String] or Array[String] using .toList and .toArrayrespectively.

Iterator interface allows us to traverse each line, using foreach. The syntactic sugar lines.foreach(println)you see here is short-hand for:

lines.foreach(line => println(line))

or

for (line <- lines) {
  println(line)
}

After extracting the buffer, we close it with buffer.close.

catch block here demonstrate Scala's pattern matching feature. By default, all exceptions can be caught as a Throwable. However we have the option to deal with specific exception (FileNotFoundException or IOException) separately.

Usage is simple:

readFromFile("output.txt")

Write to a file

Similar pattern for writing to files. Unlike read, which is usually at the beginning of some logic and having the input type determined gains us benefits, write is usually a void function with no return types, and called at the end of execution (result, log, etc.).

// write to file
// stdout exception when fail
def writeToFile(filename: String, contents: String) {
  try {
    val writer = new PrintWriter(new File(filename))
    writer.write(contents)
    writer.close
  } catch {
    case e: FileNotFoundException => println(s"Cannot write into file ${filename}.")
    case e: Throwable => println(s"Error <span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mrow><mi>e</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">.</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>t</mi><mi>M</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>s</mi><mi>s</mi><mi>a</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>e</mi></mrow><mi>w</mi><mi>h</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>n</mi><mi>w</mi><mi>r</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>t</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>n</mi><mi>g</mi><mi>t</mi><mi>o</mi><mi>f</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>l</mi><mi>e</mi></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex">{e.getMessage} when writing to file </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:0.8889em;vertical-align:-0.1944em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord">.</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.10903em;">tM</span><span class="mord mathnormal">ess</span><span class="mord mathnormal">a</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span></span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.02691em;">w</span><span class="mord mathnormal">h</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span><span class="mord mathnormal">n</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.02691em;">w</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.02778em;">r</span><span class="mord mathnormal">i</span><span class="mord mathnormal">t</span><span class="mord mathnormal">in</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal">t</span><span class="mord mathnormal">o</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.10764em;">f</span><span class="mord mathnormal">i</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.01968em;">l</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span></span></span></span>{filename}.")
  }
}

Usage is straightforward, simply call the function:

```scala
writeToFile("output.txt", "I am a string.\nI am also a string.\nScala is fun!\n")

How to Run the Solution

The source requires standard scala compiler and runtime: scalac and scala. Before running the program, make sure the files are in the same directory as the compiled .class.

$ scalac FileInputOutput.scala
$ scala FileInputOutput