How to Take Input From User Separated By Space in Java ?

Last Updated : 01 Feb, 2023

There are 2 methods to take input from the user which are separated by space which are as follows:

Using BufferedReader Class and then splitting and parsing each value
Using nextInt( ) method of Scanner class

Let us discuss both the methods one by one in order to get a better understanding by implementing the same clean java programs.

Method 1:

Using BufferedReader Class and then splitting and parsing each value.

Procedure:

Using readline() method of BufferedReader and Scan the whole string.
Split this String for str.split(" ")
Iterate over the above array and parse each integer value using Integer.parseInt( ).

Example

Java

// Java Program to Take Input from User Separated by Space
// Using BufferedReader class

// Importing required classes
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

// Main class
// BufferedReaderTest
class GFG {

    // Main driver method
    public static void main(String[] args)
        throws IOException
    {

        // Creating an object of BufferedReader class
        BufferedReader bi = new BufferedReader(
            new InputStreamReader(System.in));

        // Custom integer array of size 10
        int num[] = new int[10];
        // Array of string type to store input
        String[] strNums;

        // Display message
        System.out.println("enter string of numbers");

        // Reading input a string
        strNums = bi.readLine().split(" ");

        for (int i = 0; i < strNums.length; i++) {
            num[i] = Integer.parseInt(strNums[i]);
        }

        // Display message
        System.out.println("printing stored numbers ");

        // Printing the stored numbers using for loop
        for (int i = 0; i < strNums.length; i++) {
            System.out.println(num[i]);
        }
    }
}

Output:

Method 2: Using nextInt() method of Scanner class.

Procedure:

Using the nextInt() method of Scanner class and scan to scan the input.
Using for loop to store input in an array.
Iterate through the above array and parse each integer using sc.nextInt()

Example

Java

// Java Program to Take Input from User Separated by Space
// Using Scanner class

// Importing required classes
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Scanner;

// Main class
// Scanner class
class GFG {

    // Main driver method
    public static void main(String[] args)
        throws IOException
    {

        // Display message for better readability
        System.out.println("enter input ");

        // Creating an object of Scanner class
        Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);

        // Declaring and initializing an array of size 10
        int[] nums = new int[10];
        int i;

        // Loop to store input values in nums array
        for (i = 0; i < nums.length; i++) {
            nums[i] = sc.nextInt();
        }

        //  Display message
        System.out.println("printing stored values");

        // Printing stored values
        for (i = 0; i < nums.length; i++) {
            System.out.println(nums[i] + " ");
        }
    }
}

Output:

Note: The first method using Bufferedreader class and then splitting and parsing each value is much faster than using nixing() method of Scanner class. It is nearly 2 times faster than the second one. Below we do provide in order how to calculate the time consume by both methods by using nanotime method

// Initializing variables
long startTime, endTime;

// Start time
startTime = System.nanoTime(); {

// Insert code here
// Method 1 or method 2 code
}

// End time
endTime = System.nanoTime();