Chapter 3  Input and output

The programs we’ve looked at so far simply display messages, which doesn’t involve a lot of real computation. This chapter will show you how to read input from the keyboard, use that input to calculate a result, and then format that result for output.

3.1  The System class

We have been using System.out.println for a while, but you might not have thought about what it means. System is a class that provides methods related to the “system” or environment where programs run. It also provides System.out, which is a special value that provides methods for displaying output, including println.

In fact, we can use System.out.println to display the value of System.out:

The result is:

This output indicates that System.out is a PrintStream, which is defined in a package called java.io. A package is a collection of related classes; java.io contains classes for “I/O” which stands for input and output.

The numbers and letters after the @ sign are the address of System.out, represented as a hexadecimal (base 16) number. The address of a value is its location in the computer’s memory, which might be different on different computers. In this example the address is 685d72cd, but if you run the same code you might get something different.

As shown in Figure 3.1, System is defined in a file called System.java, and PrintStream is defined in PrintStream.java. These files are part of the Java library, which is an extensive collection of classes you can use in your programs.

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Figure 3.1: System.out.println refers to the out variable of the System class, which is a PrintStream that provides a method called println.

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3.2  The Scanner class

The System class also provides the special value System.in, which is an InputStream that provides methods for reading input from the keyboard. These methods are not easy to use; fortunately, Java provides other classes that make it easier to handle common input tasks.

For example, Scanner is a class that provides methods for inputting words, numbers, and other data. Scanner is provided by java.util, which is a package that contains classes so useful they are called “utility classes”. Before you can use Scanner, you have to import it like this:

This import statement tells the compiler that when you say Scanner, you mean the one defined in java.util. It’s necessary because there might be another class named Scanner in another package. Using an import statement makes your code unambiguous.

Import statements can’t be inside a class definition. By convention, they are usually at the beginning of the file.

Next you have to create a Scanner:

This line declares a Scanner variable named in and creates a new Scanner that takes input from System.in.

Scanner provides a method called nextLine that reads a line of input from the keyboard and returns a String. The following example reads two lines and repeats them back to the user:

If you omit the import statement and later refer to Scanner, you will get a compiler error like “cannot find symbol”. That means the compiler doesn’t know what you mean by Scanner.

You might wonder why we can use the System class without importing it. System belongs to the java.lang package, which is imported automatically. According to the documentation, java.lang “provides classes that are fundamental to the design of the Java programming language.” The String class is also part of the java.lang package.

3.3  Program structure

At this point, we have seen all of the elements that make up Java programs. Figure 3.2 shows these organizational units.

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Figure 3.2: Elements of the Java language, from largest to smallest.

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To review, a package is a collection of classes, which define methods. Methods contain statements, some of which contain expressions. Expressions are made up of tokens, which are the basic elements of a program, including numbers, variable names, operators, keywords, and punctuation like parentheses, braces and semicolons.

The standard edition of Java comes with several thousand classes you can import, which can be both exciting and intimidating. You can browse this library at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/. Most of the Java library itself is written in Java.

Note there is a major difference between the Java language, which defines the syntax and meaning of the elements in Figure 3.2, and the Java library, which provides the built-in classes.

3.4  Inches to centimeters

Now let’s see an example that’s a little more useful. Although most of the world has adopted the metric system for weights and measures, some countries are stuck with English units. For example, when talking with friends in Europe about the weather, people in the United States might have to convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit and back. Or they might want to convert height in inches to centimeters.

We can write a program to help. We’ll use a Scanner to input a measurement in inches, convert to centimeters, and then display the results. The following lines declare the variables and create the Scanner:

The next step is to prompt the user for the input. We’ll use print instead of println so they can enter the input on the same line as the prompt. And we’ll use the Scanner method nextInt, which reads input from the keyboard and converts it to an integer:

Next we multiply the number of inches by 2.54, since that’s how many centimeters there are per inch, and display the results:

This code works correctly, but it has a minor problem. If another programmer reads this code, they might wonder where 2.54 comes from. For the benefit of others (and yourself in the future), it would be better to assign this value to a variable with a meaningful name. We’ll demonstrate in the next section.

3.5  Literals and constants

A value that appears in a program, like 2.54 (or " in ="), is called a literal. In general, there’s nothing wrong with literals. But when numbers like 2.54 appear in an expression with no explanation, they make code hard to read. And if the same value appears many times, and might have to change in the future, it makes code hard to maintain.

Values like that are sometimes called magic numbers (with the implication that being “magic” is not a good thing). A good practice is to assign magic numbers to variables with meaningful names, like this:

This version is easier to read and less error-prone, but it still has a problem. Variables can vary, but the number of centimeters in an inch does not. Once we assign a value to cmPerInch, it should never change. Java provides a language feature that enforces that rule, the keyword final.

Declaring that a variable is final means that it cannot be reassigned once it has been initialized. If you try, the compiler reports an error. Variables declared as final are called constants. By convention, names for constants are all uppercase, with the underscore character (_) between words.

3.6  Formatting output

When you output a double using print or println, it displays up to 16 decimal places:

The result is:

That might be more than you want. System.out provides another method, called printf, that gives you more control of the format. The “f” in printf stands for “formatted”. Here’s an example:

The first value in the parentheses is a format string that specifies how the output should be displayed. This format string contains ordinary text followed by a format specifier, which is a special sequence that starts with a percent sign. The format specifier \%.3f indicates that the following value should be displayed as floating-point, rounded to three decimal places. The result is:

The format string can contain any number of format specifiers; here’s an example with two:

The result is:

Like print, printf does not append a newline. So format strings often end with a newline character.

The format specifier \%d displays integer values (“d” stands for “decimal”). The values are matched up with the format specifiers in order, so inch is displayed using \%d, and cm is displayed using \%f.

Learning about format strings is like learning a sub-language within Java. There are many options, and the details can be overwhelming. Table 3.1 lists a few common uses, to give you an idea of how things work. For more details, refer to the documentation of java.util.Formatter. The easiest way to find documentation for Java classes is to do a web search for “Java” and the name of the class.

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\%d	decimal integer	12345
\%08d	padded with zeros, at least 8 digits wide	00012345
\%f	floating-point	6.789000
\%.2f	rounded to 2 decimal places	6.79

Table 3.1: Example format specifiers

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3.7  Centimeters to inches

Now suppose we have a measurement in centimeters, and we want to round it off to the nearest inch. It is tempting to write:

But the result is an error – you get something like, “Bad types in assignment: from double to int.” The problem is that the value on the right is floating-point, and the variable on the left is an integer.

The simplest way to convert a floating-point value to an integer is to use a type cast, so called because it molds or “casts” a value from one type to another. The syntax for type casting is to put the name of the type in parentheses and use it as an operator.

The (int) operator has the effect of converting what follows into an integer. In this example, x gets the value 3. Like integer division, converting to an integer always rounds toward zero, even if the fraction part is 0.999999 (or -0.999999). In other words, it simply throws away the fractional part.

Type casting takes precedence over arithmetic operations. In this example, the value of pi gets converted to an integer before the multiplication. So the result is 60.0, not 62.0.

Keeping that in mind, here’s how we can convert a measurement in centimeters to inches:

The parentheses after the cast operator require the division to happen before the type cast. And the result is rounded toward zero; we will see in the next chapter how to round floating-point numbers to the closest integer.

3.8  Modulus operator

Let’s take the example one step further: suppose you have a measurement in inches and you want to convert to feet and inches. The goal is divide by 12 (the number of inches in a foot) and keep the remainder.

We have already seen the division operator (/), which computes the quotient of two numbers. If the numbers are integers, it performs integer division. Java also provides the modulus operator (\%), which divides two numbers and computes the remainder.

Using division and modulus, we can convert to feet and inches like this:

The first line yields 6. The second line, which is pronounced “76 mod 12”, yields 4. So 76 inches is 6 feet, 4 inches.

The modulus operator looks like a percent sign, but you might find it helpful to think of it as a division sign (÷) rotated to the left.

The modulus operator turns out to be surprisingly useful. For example, you can check whether one number is divisible by another: if x \% y is zero, then x is divisible by y. You can use modulus to “extract” digits from a number: x \% 10 yields the rightmost digit of x, and x \% 100 yields the last two digits. Also, many encryption algorithms use the modulus operator extensively.

3.9  Putting it all together

At this point, you have seen enough Java to write useful programs that solve everyday problems. You can (1) import Java library classes, (2) create a Scanner, (3) get input from the keyboard, (4) format output with printf, and (5) divide and mod integers. Now we will put everything together in a complete program:

Although not required, all variables and constants are declared at the top of main. This practice makes it easier to find their types later on, and it helps the reader know what data is involved in the algorithm.

For readability, each major step of the algorithm is separated by a blank line and begins with a comment. It also includes a documentation comment (/**), which we’ll learn more about in the next chapter.

Many algorithms, including the Convert program, perform division and modulus together. In both steps, you divide by the same number (IN_PER_FOOT).

When statements get long (generally wider than 80 characters), a common style convention is to break them across multiple lines. The reader should never have to scroll horizontally.

3.10  The Scanner bug

Now that you’ve had some experience with Scanner, there is an unexpected behavior we want to warn you about. The following code fragment asks users for their name and age:

The output might look something like this:

When you read a String followed by an int, everything works just fine. But when you read an int followed by a String, something strange happens.

Try running this example code. It doesn’t let you input your name, and it immediately displays the output:

To understand what is happening, you have to understand that the Scanner doesn’t see input as multiple lines, like we do. Instead, it gets a “stream of characters” as shown in Figure 3.3.

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Figure 3.3: A stream of characters as seen by a Scanner.

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The arrow indicates the next character to be read by Scanner. When you call nextInt, it reads characters until it gets to a non-digit. Figure 3.4 shows the state of the stream after nextInt is invoked.

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Figure 3.4: A stream of characters after nextInt is invoked.

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At this point, nextInt returns 45. The program then displays the prompt "What is your name? " and calls nextLine, which reads characters until it gets to a newline. But since the next character is already a newline, nextLine returns the empty string "".

To solve this problem, you need an extra nextLine after nextInt.

This technique is common when reading int or double values that appear on their own line. First you read the number, and then you read the rest of the line, which is just a newline character.

3.11  Vocabulary

package:

A group of classes that are related to each other.

address:

The location of a value in computer memory, often represented as a hexadecimal integer.

library:

A collection of packages and classes that are available for use in other programs.

import statement:

A statement that allows programs to use classes defined in other packages.

token:

A basic element of a program, such as a word, space, symbol, or number.

literal:

A value that appears in source code. For example, "Hello" is a string literal and 74 is an integer literal.

magic number:

A number that appears without explanation as part of an expression. It should generally be replaced with a constant.

constant:

A variable, declared final, whose value cannot be changed.

format string:

A string passed to printf to specify the format of the output.

format specifier:

A special code that begins with a percent sign and specifies the data type and format of the corresponding value.

type cast:

An operation that explicitly converts one data type into another. In Java it appears as a type name in parentheses, like (int).

modulus:

An operator that yields the remainder when one integer is divided by another. In Java, it is denoted with a percent sign; for example, 5 \% 2 is 1.

3.12  Exercises

The code for this chapter is in the ch03 directory of ThinkJavaCode. See page ?? for instructions on how to download the repository. Before you start the exercises, we recommend that you compile and run the examples.

If you have not already read Appendix A.3, now might be a good time. It describes the command-line interface, which is a powerful and efficient way to interact with your computer.