Read String line by line

Question

There is also Scanner. You can use it just like the BufferedReader:

Scanner scanner = new Scanner(myString);
while (scanner.hasNextLine()) {
  String line = scanner.nextLine();
  // process the line
}
scanner.close();

I think that this is a bit cleaner approach that both of the suggested ones.

You can also use the split method of String:

String[] lines = myString.split(System.getProperty("line.separator"));

This gives you all lines in a handy array.

I don't know about the performance of split. It uses regular expressions.

Since I was especially interested in the efficiency angle, I created a little test class (below). Outcome for 5,000,000 lines:

Comparing line breaking performance of different solutions
Testing 5000000 lines
Split (all): 14665 ms
Split (CR only): 3752 ms
Scanner: 10005
Reader: 2060

As usual, exact times may vary, but the ratio holds true however often I've run it.

Conclusion: the "simpler" and "more efficient" requirements of the OP can't be satisfied simultaneously, the split solution (in either incarnation) is simpler, but the Reader implementation beats the others hands down.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.StringReader;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Scanner;

/**
 * Test class for splitting a string into lines at linebreaks
 */
public class LineBreakTest {
    /** Main method: pass in desired line count as first parameter (default = 10000). */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int lineCount = args.length == 0 ? 10000 : Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
        System.out.println("Comparing line breaking performance of different solutions");
        System.out.printf("Testing %d lines%n", lineCount);
        String text = createText(lineCount);
        testSplitAllPlatforms(text);
        testSplitWindowsOnly(text);
        testScanner(text);
        testReader(text);
    }

    private static void testSplitAllPlatforms(String text) {
        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        text.split("\n\r|\r");
        System.out.printf("Split (regexp): %d%n", System.currentTimeMillis() - start);
    }

    private static void testSplitWindowsOnly(String text) {
        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        text.split("\n");
        System.out.printf("Split (CR only): %d%n", System.currentTimeMillis() - start);
    }

    private static void testScanner(String text) {
        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        List<String> result = new ArrayList<>();
        try (Scanner scanner = new Scanner(text)) {
            while (scanner.hasNextLine()) {
                result.add(scanner.nextLine());
            }
        }
        System.out.printf("Scanner: %d%n", System.currentTimeMillis() - start);
    }

    private static void testReader(String text) {
        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        List<String> result = new ArrayList<>();
        try (BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new StringReader(text))) {
            String line = reader.readLine();
            while (line != null) {
                result.add(line);
                line = reader.readLine();
            }
        } catch (IOException exc) {
            // quit
        }
        System.out.printf("Reader: %d%n", System.currentTimeMillis() - start);
    }

    private static String createText(int lineCount) {
        StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
        StringBuilder lineBuilder = new StringBuilder();
        for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++) {
            lineBuilder.append("word ");
        }
        String line = lineBuilder.toString();
        for (int i = 0; i < lineCount; i++) {
            result.append(line);
            result.append("\n");
        }
        return result.toString();
    }
}

Using Apache Commons IOUtils you can do this nicely via

List<String> lines = IOUtils.readLines(new StringReader(string));

It's not doing anything clever, but it's nice and compact. It'll handle streams as well, and you can get a LineIterator too if you prefer.

Solution using Java 8 features such as Stream API and Method references

new BufferedReader(new StringReader(myString))
        .lines().forEach(System.out::println);

or

public void someMethod(String myLongString) {

    new BufferedReader(new StringReader(myLongString))
            .lines().forEach(this::parseString);
}

private void parseString(String data) {
    //do something
}

Since Java 11, there is a new method String.lines:

/**
 * Returns a stream of lines extracted from this string,
 * separated by line terminators.
 * ...
 */
public Stream<String> lines() { ... }

Usage:

"line1\nline2\nlines3"
    .lines()
    .forEach(System.out::println);

You can also use:

String[] lines = someString.split("\n");

If that doesn't work try replacing \n with \r\n.