How to open a file without erasing its contents?

[spmchugh82]

I think what happening here is FileOutputStream is erasing the file and so when input.readObject() is called it's reading from a blank file. Is that right? Is there any way I can write to the file without recreating it? Maybe FileWriter?


input = new ObjectInputStream(new FileInputStream(dataFile));
output = new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(dataFile));
table = (Table) input.readObject();

[spmchugh82]

Okay, I just got it to work by switching around output = and table=

input = new ObjectInputStream(new FileInputStream(dataFile));
table = (Table) input.readObject();
output = new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(dataFile));

...so this works fine. But is there a better way to do it?

[Fubarable]

Have a look at the FileOutputStream API especially the constructors. There's one available that uses a boolean that will allow you to append to a file rather than overwrite the file.