Reading and deleting the same line in a File

[Zico Gupta]

Hello,
I'm trying to read some lines from a file from the begging and delete those lines after reading them so that next time I don't have to read those which already being read.
The problem is, till now I able to remove the last lines(s) using following code :

public class FileOps {
	public static void main(String[]args)throws IOException{
	File file = new File("D:\\mytestfile.txt");
	if(file.exists()){
		readAndDelete(file);
	}else if(file.createNewFile()){
		FileWriter fstream = new FileWriter(file);
	      BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(fstream);
	      out.write("omes1.xml\nomes2.xml\nomes3.xml\n");
	      out.close();
	      readAndDelete(file);
	}
	}

	private static void readAndDelete(File file) throws FileNotFoundException,IOException{
		RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile(file,"rw");
		String s = raf.readLine();
		
		byte[] b = s.getBytes();
		
			raf.setLength(raf.length()-b.length+1);
		
		
	}
}

This code reads the first line i.e. omes1.xml, but deletes 'omes3.xml' from the end. Is there any solution which will remove only 'omes1.xml' after reading?

Thanks & Regards,
Zico

[William Brogden]

As you have found, you can cut from the end of a file but:

You can't just reach into the middle of a file and delete data, you have to write a modified file, delete the old and rename.

Bill

[Campbell Ritchie]

And welcome to the Ranch