How to get Java to wait for user Input

Question

I am trying to make an IRC bot for my channel. I would like the bot to be able to take commands from the console. In an attempt to make the main loop wait for the user to input something I added the loop:

while(!userInput.hasNext());

this did not seem to work. I have heard of BufferedReader but I have never used it and am not sure if this would be able to solve my problem.

while(true) {
        System.out.println("Ready for a new command sir.");
        Scanner userInput = new Scanner(System.in);

        while(!userInput.hasNext());

        String input = "";
        if (userInput.hasNext()) input = userInput.nextLine();

        System.out.println("input is '" + input + "'");

        if (!input.equals("")) {
            //main code
        }
        userInput.close();
        Thread.sleep(1000);
    }

Answer 1

There is no need for you to check for available input waiting and sleeping until there is since Scanner.nextLine() will block until a line is available.

Have a look at this example I wrote to demonstrate it:

public class ScannerTest {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
        try {
            while (true) {
                System.out.println("Please input a line");
                long then = System.currentTimeMillis();
                String line = scanner.nextLine();
                long now = System.currentTimeMillis();
                System.out.printf("Waited %.3fs for user input%n", (now - then) / 1000d);
                System.out.printf("User input was: %s%n", line);
            }
        } catch(IllegalStateException | NoSuchElementException e) {
            // System.in has been closed
            System.out.println("System.in was closed; exiting");
        }
    }
}

Please input a line
hello
Waited 1.892s for user input
User input was: hello
Please input a line
^D
System.in was closed; exiting

So all you have to do is to use Scanner.nextLine() and your app will wait until the user has entered a newline. You also don't want to define your Scanner inside the loop and close it since you're going to use it again in the next iteration:

Scanner userInput = new Scanner(System.in);
while(true) {
        System.out.println("Ready for a new command sir.");

        String input = userInput.nextLine();
        System.out.println("input is '" + input + "'");

        if (!input.isEmpty()) {
            // Handle input
        }
    }
}