How to Read Character in Java

Java Scanner class provides nextInt() method for reading an integer value, nextDouble() method for reading a double value, nextLong() method for reading a long value, etc. But there is no nextChar() method in the Scanner class to read a character in Java. In this section, we will learn how to take character input in Java.

To read a character in Java, we use next() of the Scanner class method followed by chatAt() at method of the String class.

Java next() Method

The next() method is a method of Java Scanner class. It finds and returns the next complete token from this scanner. A complete token is preceded and followed by input that matches the delimiter pattern. It may block while waiting for input to scan, even if a previous invocation of hasNext() return true.

Syntax:

The method throws the NoSuchElementException if no more tokens are available. It also throws IllegalStateException if the scanner is closed.

Java chatAt() Method

The charAt() is a method of the Java String class. It returns the char value at the specified index (range from 0 to length()-1). In a character sequence, the first character index value is 0, the next at index 1, and so on.

Syntax:

The method throws IndexOutOfBoundsException if the index argument is negative or not less than the length of the string.

To read a character in Java, we use next() method followed by charAt(0). The next() method returns the next token/ word in the input as a string and chatAt() method returns the first character in that string.

We use the next() and charAt() method in the following way to read a character.

Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in); 
char c = sc.next().charAt(0); 

The following program takes a character from user, as input and prints the same character.

CharacterInputExample1.java

import java.util.Scanner; 
public class CharacterInputExample1
{ 
public static void main(String[] args) 
{ 
Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in); 
System.out.print("Input a character: ");
// reading a character 
char c = sc.next().charAt(0); 
//prints the character 
System.out.println("You have entered "+c); 
} 
}

Output:

Input a character: R
You have entered R

CharacterInputExample2.java

import java.util.Scanner; 
public class CharacterInputExample
{ 
public static void main(String[] args) 
{ 
Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in); 
System.out.print("Input a character: ");
//takes a string as input
String str=sc.next();
//reads a character from string at the specified index value
char ch=str.charAt(0);
// prints the character 
System.out.println("You have entered "+ch); 
} 
}

Output: