How to read a text file into ArrayList in Java

Prior to Java 7, reading a text file into an ArrayList involves lot of boiler plate coding, as you need to read the file line by line and insert each line into an ArrayList, but from Java 7 onward, you can use the utility method Files.readAllLines() to read all lines of a text file into a List. This method return a List of String which contains all lines of files. Later you can convert this List to ArrayList, LinkedList, or whatever list you want to. Btw, this the fourth article in the series of reading a text file in Java. In the earlier parts, you have learned how to read a file using Scanner and BufferedReader(1). Then, reading the whole file as String (2) and finally reading a text file into array (3). This program is not very different from those in terms of fundamentals. We are still going to use read() method for Java 6 solution and will read all text until this method return -1 which signals the end of file.

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