How to get out of while loop in java with Scanner method "hasNext" as condition?

Question

I ran into an issue. Below is my code, which asks user for input and prints out what the user inputs one word at a time.

The problem is that the program never ends, and from my limited understanding, it seem to get stuck inside the while loop. Could anyone help me a little?

import java.util.Scanner;

public class Test{
   public static void main(String args[]){
      System.out.print("Enter your sentence: ");
      Scanner sc = new Scanner (System.in);
     
      while (sc.hasNext() == true ) {
        String s1 = sc.next();
        System.out.println(s1);
      }

      System.out.println("The loop has been ended"); // This somehow never get printed.
   }
}

Answer 1

You keep on getting new a new string and continue the loop if it's not empty. Simply insert a control in the loop for an exit string.

while(!s1.equals("exit") && sc.hasNext()) {
    // operate
}

If you want to declare the string inside the loop and not to do the operations in the loop body if the string is "exit":

while(sc.hasNext()) {
    String s1 = sc.next();
    if(s1.equals("exit")) {
        break;
    }
    //operate
}

Answer 2

The Scanner will continue to read until it finds an "end of file" condition.

As you're reading from stdin, that'll either be when you send an EOF character (usually ^d on Unix), or at the end of the file if you use < style redirection.

Answer 3

When you use scanner, as mentioned by Alnitak, you only get 'false' for hasNext() when you have a EOF character, basically... You cannot easily send and EOF character using the keyboard, therefore in situations like this, it's common to have a special character or word which you can send to stop execution, for example:

String s1 = sc.next();
if (s1.equals("exit")) {
    break;
}

Break will get you out of the loop.

Answer 4

Your condition is right (though you should drop the == true). What is happening is that the scanner will keep going until it reaches the end of the input. Try Ctrl+D, or pipe the input from a file (java myclass < input.txt).

Answer 5

it doesn't work because you have not programmed a fail-safe into the code. java sees that the scanner can still collect input while there is input to be collected and if possible, while that is true, it keeps doing so. having a scanner test to see if a certain word, like EXIT for example, is fine, but you could also have it loop a certain number of times, like ten or so. but the most efficient approach is to ask the user of your program how many strings they wish to enter, and while the number of strings they enter is less than the number they put in, the program shall execute. an added option could be if they type EXIT, when they see they need less spaces than they put in and don't want to fill the next cells up with nothing but whitespace. and you could have the program ask if they want to enter more input, in case they realize they need to enter more data into the computer. the program would be quite simplistic to make, as well because there are a plethera of ways you could do it. feel free to ask me for these ways, i'm running out of room though. XD

Answer 6

If you don't want to use an EOF character for this, you can use StringTokenizer :

import java.util.*;
public class Test{
   public static void main(){
      Scanner sc = new Scanner (System.in);
      System.out.print("Enter your sentence: ");
      String s=sc.nextLine();
      StringTokenizer st=new StringTokenizer(s," ");//" " is the delimiter here.
      while (st.hasMoreTokens() ) {
        String s1 = st.nextToken();
        System.out.println(s1);
      }

      System.out.println("The loop has been ended");
   }
}

Answer 7

I had the same problem and I solved it by reading the full line from the console with one scanner object, and then parsing the resulting string using a second scanner object.

Scanner console = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.println("Enter input here:");
String inputLine = console.nextLine();

Scanner input = new Scanner(inputLine);
List<String> arg = new ArrayList<>();

while (input.hasNext()) {
    arg.add(input.next().toLowerCase());
}

Answer 8

You can simply use one of the system dependent end-of-file indicators ( d for Unix/Linux/Ubuntu, z for windows) to make the while statement false. This should get you out of the loop nicely. :)

Answer 9

Modify the while loop as below. Declare s1 as String s1; one time outside the loop. To end the loop, simply use ctrl+z.

  while (sc.hasNext())
  {    
    s1 = sc.next();
    System.out.println(s1);
    System.out.print("Enter your sentence: ");
  }