How to efficiently read the last line of a text file in Java?

Reading the Last Line of a Text File Efficiently with Java

Reading the last line of a large text file efficiently is a common challenge in Java programming. The standard method of reading the file line by line is not efficient, as it requires iterating through the entire file.

A more efficient approach is to use the RandomAccessFile class. This class allows random access to a file, enabling us to directly access the last line without stepping through the entire file. The following code demonstrates this approach:

public String tail(File file) {
    RandomAccessFile fileHandler = null;
    try {
        fileHandler = new RandomAccessFile(file, "r");
        long fileLength = fileHandler.length() - 1;
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

        // Start from the last character of the file
        for (long filePointer = fileLength; filePointer != -1; filePointer--) {
            fileHandler.seek(filePointer);
            int readByte = fileHandler.readByte();

            // Check for line break
            if (readByte == 0xA) {
                if (filePointer == fileLength) {
                    continue;
                }
                break;
            } else if (readByte == 0xD) {
                if (filePointer == fileLength - 1) {
                    continue;
                }
                break;
            }

            // Append character to the string builder
            sb.append((char) readByte);
        }

        String lastLine = sb.reverse().toString();
        return lastLine;
    } catch (java.io.FileNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return null;
    } catch (java.io.IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return null;
    } finally {
        if (fileHandler != null) {
            try {
                fileHandler.close();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                /* ignore */
            }
        }
    }
}

This method efficiently returns the last line of the file without loading or stepping through the entire file.

However, in many scenarios, you may need to read the last N lines of the file. The following code demonstrates a method that can achieve this:

public String tail2(File file, int lines) {
    RandomAccessFile fileHandler = null;
    try {
        fileHandler = new java.io.RandomAccessFile(file, "r");
        long fileLength = fileHandler.length() - 1;
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        int line = 0;

        // Start from the last character of the file
        for (long filePointer = fileLength; filePointer != -1; filePointer--) {
            fileHandler.seek(filePointer);
            int readByte = fileHandler.readByte();

            // Check for line break
            if (readByte == 0xA) {
                if (filePointer < fileLength) {
                    line = line + 1;
                }
            } else if (readByte == 0xD) {
                if (filePointer < fileLength - 1) {
                    line = line + 1;
                }
            }

            // Break if the required number of lines have been reached
            if (line >= lines) {
                break;
            }

            // Append character to the string builder
            sb.append((char) readByte);
        }

        String lastLine = sb.reverse().toString();
        return lastLine;
    } catch (java.io.FileNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return null;
    } catch (java.io.IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return null;
    } finally {
        if (fileHandler != null) {
            try {
                fileHandler.close();
            } catch (IOException e) {
            }
        }
    }
}

This method similarly uses the RandomAccessFile class to efficiently read the last N lines of the file.

These methods can be invoked as follows:

File file = new File("D:\stuff\huge.log");
System.out.println(tail(file));
System.out.println(tail2(file, 10));

Note: These methods may not produce Unicode characters correctly due to reversal, so it is important to test thoroughly with different languages.

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