hello, i am trying to read from a file and take certain lines from the file and store them in an array. the program works fine if i store it in a variable but when i try to store it in an array it does not work. here is my code: try { file1 = new FileInputStream(fileName); in = new DataInputStream(file1); for (int i = 1; i < 1000; i = i++) { names[i].equals(in.readLine()); for (int z = 0; i < 15; i++) { System.out.println(names[z]); } // end for for (int x = 1; x < 8; x++) { in.readLine(); } // end for if (fileInput .equals(null)) { System.out.println(); } // end if } // end for in.close(); } // end try thanks in advance shane

Your problem is in the following line names[i].equals(in.readLine()); change this line to names[i] = in.readLine(); make sure you have your array declared as a String type the equals() function does not assign the value from your input stream to names array. you are acutally checking to see if the value of names[i] == in.readline(). So basically you are doing and == on a string... since java is an object based language it does not support and == operation instead it provides and equal() member function. hope this helps

thank you your code helped. but now i am trying to read in integers from the same file and im trying to put them into a different array. I think readLine() reads from the file all output as strings and i cant get them to store them into an array. Ive tried using parseInt to convert it but i dont think that works with arrays. shane