This reference is for Processing 2.0+. If you have a previous version, use the reference included with your software. If you see any errors or have suggestions, please let us know. If you prefer a more technical reference, visit the Processing Javadoc.

Name | ### loadStrings()
Examples |
    String lines[] = loadStrings("list.txt");
    println("there are " + lines.length + " lines");
    for (int i = 0 ; i < lines.length; i++) {
      println(lines[i]);
    }
    String lines[] = loadStrings("http://processing.org/about/index.html");
    println("there are " + lines.length + " lines");
    for (int i = 0 ; i < lines.length; i++) {
      println(lines[i]);
    }
Description | Reads the contents of a file and creates a String array of its individual lines. If the name of the file is used as the parameter, as in the above example, the file must be loaded in the sketch's "data" directory/folder. Alternatively, the file maybe be loaded from anywhere on the local computer using an absolute path (something that starts with / on Unix and Linux, or a drive letter on Windows), or the filename parameter can be a URL for a file found on a network. If the file is not available or an error occurs, null will be returned and an error message will be printed to the console. The error message does not halt the program, however the null value may cause a NullPointerException if your code does not check whether the value returned is null. Starting with Processing release 0134, all files loaded and saved by the Processing API use UTF-8 encoding. In previous releases, the default encoding for your platform was used, which causes problems when files are moved to other platforms.
Syntax |
    loadStrings(filename)
    loadStrings(reader)
Parameters |
filename | String: name of the file or url to load
Returns | String[]
Related | loadBytes() saveStrings() saveBytes()

Updated on May 19, 2014 05:30:00pm PDT