modifying a text file

[greg mic]

Hey everyone!

I'm a total beginner in programming, and I ran into a problem. My english is not that great but I'll try to explain my question properly.

I have an assignment where I have to write a program that modifies the string in a text file (this is the input file), by creating a new file (the output file).

The output file is almost the same as the input file, except it should sort of encrypt the original text by changing every letter of the input file to the following letter in the alphabet.

An example:

I have a text file which contains the string " abc". I have to write a program that creates another text file that would contain the string: "bcd".

I have a very shallow knowledge of programming, but I'm guessing the way I should do this is with a for loop that changes every charachter of the input file to the next character? Although I don't really know how to go about it.

How do I go about this?

Thanks for your help!

[Tim Moores]

Welcome to the Ranch.

For learning Java, Oracle has an extensive tutorial at https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/. For the particular problem at hand, the "Basic I/O" chapter seems relevant, especially its subsection on "Reading, Writing, and Creating Files".

[greg mic]

Hello Tim!

Thanks for the link, I'll look into that!

[Junilu Lacar]

What you've described is a rotating cipher where each input character is shifted N places. In your example, it's ROT-1 because the shift is 1 place. Another typical one is ROT-13 where you shift each letter halfway around the (English) alphabet.

Individual characters of a string can be represented by the char type which is an integer type. That means you can perform arithmetic operations on it like + and %.

Try the following in jshell, the Java REPL:

jshell> char ch = 'e'
... some output

jshell> ch + 1
... some output

jshell> ch - 1
... some output

jshell> ch - 'a'
... some output

That last expression is how you calculate the "distance" between one letter from another which in that case is the distance between the letters 'a' and 'e'. You'll need this for your program.

Your biggest challenge will be when your input is 'z' or 'Z' which I assume you'll need to wrap back to 'a' or 'A', respectively. All the above hints will be useful for you.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Junilu Lacar wrote:What you've described is a rotating cipher  . . .

Is that the same as a Caesar cipher?

[Junilu Lacar]

Following the link will give you the answer.

[Campbell Ritchie]

I found two links giving Caesar's cipher wrongly, because they thought the Romans used a 26‑letter alphabet.

[greg mic]

Hey again!

This is my attempt at creating a code that changes a character of a string to the next character in the alphabet, but it doesn't seem to be working properly

import java.io.*;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.io.Reader;
import java.util.StringTokenizer;

public class assignment {

	public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
	
		BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("input\\inputtext.txt"));
		FileWriter fw = new FileWriter("output\\outputtext.txt");
		PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(fw);
		
		String line =br.readLine();
 
		 while(line!=null) {
			 for (char small = 'a'; small < 'z'; small++) {
		             System.out.print(small++);
					 pw.println(small++);
					line = br.readLine(); 
			 }
				
				
		pw.flush();
		pw.close();
		br.close();
		 }}}

I have "hello" written in the input text file, so I should get an output file that contains the string "ifmmp", but I get something jibberish and I don't know what goes wrong.

Can you help me with this code?

Thanks in advance.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Thank you for using code tags, but you didn't quite get them right. The code goes after [code=java] and before [/code] but this time I have corrected it for you.
Don't use \\ in a file path, despite what you see in some books. Let the runtime correct the file separator for you.
I would use the Files method and a Path to create my buffered reader.
Don't call close(), but use the construct shown here in the Java™ Tutorials.

try (PrintWriter writer =
          new PrintWriter(new FileWriter("output/outputtext.txt"));
     BufferedReader reader =
          Files.newBufferedReader(Path.of("input/inputtext.txt")))
{
   // ...



   // see below
}
catch (IOException ex)
{
   // ...
}

I think I might use a buffered writer, or a Formatter, instead of a print writer: see this method. I would also use a different logic for the loop:-

try (BufferedWriter writer =
          Files.newBufferedWriter(Path.of("output/outputtext.txt"));
     BufferedReader reader =
          Files.newBufferedReader(Path.of("input/inputtext.txt")))
{
   String line;
   while((line = reader.readLine()) != null)
   {
      // ...
   }
}
catch (IOException ex)
{
   // ...
}

Line 7 reads the line and assigns it to the String variable, which happens before the null test because the = is wrapped in (...). It is strange syntax which you would never guess in a million years, but it does work. You don't need to repat readLine() as you did in line 23.
I don't understand your loop in lines 20‑22, but it isn't using the text read from the input and you are incrementing small thrice per iteration. Once on each of the three lines. Both those features look like mistakes to me.
Remember you cannot alter the contents of a String, but you can create a StringBuilder, which can be altered.

[Paul Clapham]

Unfortunately "char" is a numeric type in Java. You may represent a char value as 'a' but it's actually represented as 97. (If you think that's a strange idea you won't get an argument from me.) And then when you write it to a PrintWriter, like you did, you get 97 and not "a" written out there.

Also unfortunately you didn't show us what the jibberish actually looked like, which would have been helpful, but I'm fairly sure that's your problem. You need to convert the char to a String before writing it out. There's a few ways to do that but the least hacky is like this:

char oldValue = 'a';
String newValue = Character.toString(oldValue);

[Paul Clapham]

greg mic wrote:I have "hello" written in the input text file, so I should get an output file that contains the string "ifmmp"...

I don't see why. Your code totally ignores the contents of the input text file. But if you want informed answers, show us the output.

[Campbell Ritchie]

greg mic wrote:. . . I have "hello" written in the input text file, so I should get an output file that contains the string "ifmmp"... . . .

And have you considered what you would do if the word contains a “z”?