formatting while writing a document

Question

I am reading a txt file into a String buffer and writing the content into a word document using OutputStreamWriter.

The problem is that the formatting is not retained in the document. The spaces and the line breaks are not retained as in the text file. The txt file is formatted properly with spaces, page breaks, and tabs. I want to replicate the txt in word document. Please suggest how can the same formatting be retained. The link to the file is: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=09876662859146558533.

This is the sample code:

private static String readTextFile() {
    BufferedReader br = null;
    String content = null;
    try {
        br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("ORDER_INVOICE.TXT"));
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        String line = br.readLine();

        while (line != null) {
            sb.append(line);
            line = br.readLine(); 
            sb.append(System.lineSeparator());
        }
        content = sb.toString();
    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();

    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
        try {
            br.close();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    return content;
}

private static void createDocument(String docName, String content) {
    FileOutputStream fout = null;
    try {
        fout = new FileOutputStream(docName);
        OutputStreamWriter out = new OutputStreamWriter(fout);
        out.write(content);
        out.close();
    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

}

Answer 1

Try to change your readTextFile() like this and try.

    BufferedReader br = null;
    String content = null;
    try {
        br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("ORDER_INVOICE.TXT"));
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        String line = br.readLine();
        while(line != null) {
          content += line + "\n";
          line = br.readLine();
        }
    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();

    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
        try {
            br.close();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    return content;

Actually if your using java 7, you can use try-with-resources in order to decrease the number of lines in your code.

Answer 2

Try to avoid printing \n chars. Use \r\n for Windows - remember that line separators differ across platforms.

A more reliable way is to use PrintWriter, see How to write new line in Java FileOutputStream

After the discussion in comments:

• the source file has unix line breaks
• the output file is expected to have Windows line breaks

• we shall strip the 0x0c (form feed - i.e. move to next page on the printer) from the source file, as it is non-printable.

  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
      String content = new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get("f:\\order_invoice.txt")))
          .replace("\u000c","");
  
      PrintWriter printWriter=new PrintWriter(new FileWriter("f:\\new_order_invoice.txt"));
  
      for (String line:content.split("\\n")) {
          printWriter.println(line);
      }
  
      printWriter.close();
  }
  

So:

• read the file as it is into a String
• get rid of the form feed (0x0c, unicode u000c)
• split the string at unix line breaks \n
• write it out line by line using PrintWriter which uses the platform default line ending, i.e. windows cr-lf.

Remember that you can actually do this in one line, using a regexp to replace unix line endings to windows line endings in the string representing the whole file, and use Files.write to write out the whole file in one line. However this presented solution is probably a bit better as it always uses platform native line separators.