Writing a blackjack console program in Java

Question

Hello, I have an assignment of making a blackjack like program in a class. My first problem I am dealing with is creating an array of the cards. The professor wants an array setup with a txt file with the following format.

2 of hearts
2 of diamonds
2 of spades
2 of clubs
3 of hearts
3 of diamonds
3 of spades 

This goes on till face cards when it replaces the number with jack, queen, king, ace. Following the professors requirements, How would I take input from the txt file and just store the number and the hearts,diamonds,spades, and clubs. Thank you for the help

Answer 1

I'm sure you heard about the Scanner class.

But in case you haven't: http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/Scanner.html

Answer 2

Read the file line by line which you can split into its parts using the ' of ' as the separator.

Answer 3

Use the java.util.Scanner class, read in the file line by line, scan each line for the text 'of' to separate the card value from the card suit.

Answer 4

You can read lines with a Scanner object. Let's say your setup file is in "cards.txt"

Scanner sc = new Scanner(new File("cards.txt));

while(sc.hasNextLine()) {
    String line = sc.nextLine(); // each one of these will be like the "3 of Spades"
    // have code here to decode the line
}

This should point you in the right direction. Don't forget to import java.io.* (or .File) and java.util.* (or.Scanner)! :-)