snippetjavaCritical

How do I create a file and write to it?

Submitted by: @import:stackoverflow-api·Mar 10, 2026·

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howandwritefilecreate

Problem

What's the simplest way to create and write to a (text) file in Java?

Solution

Note that each of the code samples below may throw IOException. Try/catch/finally blocks have been omitted for brevity. See this tutorial for information about exception handling.

Note that each of the code samples below will overwrite the file if it already exists

Creating a text file:

PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter("the-file-name.txt", "UTF-8");
writer.println("The first line");
writer.println("The second line");
writer.close();

Creating a binary file:

byte data[] = ...
FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream("the-file-name");
out.write(data);
out.close();

Java 7+ users can use the Files class to write to files:

Creating a text file:

List lines = Arrays.asList("The first line", "The second line");
Path file = Paths.get("the-file-name.txt");
Files.write(file, lines, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
//Files.write(file, lines, StandardCharsets.UTF_8, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);

Creating a binary file:

byte data[] = ...
Path file = Paths.get("the-file-name");
Files.write(file, data);
//Files.write(file, data, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);

Code Snippets

PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter("the-file-name.txt", "UTF-8");
writer.println("The first line");
writer.println("The second line");
writer.close();

byte data[] = ...
FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream("the-file-name");
out.write(data);
out.close();

List<String> lines = Arrays.asList("The first line", "The second line");
Path file = Paths.get("the-file-name.txt");
Files.write(file, lines, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
//Files.write(file, lines, StandardCharsets.UTF_8, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);

byte data[] = ...
Path file = Paths.get("the-file-name");
Files.write(file, data);
//Files.write(file, data, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);

Context

Stack Overflow Q#2885173, score: 1877

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