我最喜欢的读取小文件的方法是使用BufferedReader和StringBuilder。它非常简单和切中要害(虽然不是特别有效，但对大多数情况来说已经足够好了):

BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("file.txt"));
try {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    String line = br.readLine();

    while (line != null) {
        sb.append(line);
        sb.append(System.lineSeparator());
        line = br.readLine();
    }
    String everything = sb.toString();
} finally {
    br.close();
}

有人指出，在Java 7之后，你应该使用try-with-resources(即自动关闭)功能:

try(BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("file.txt"))) {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    String line = br.readLine();

    while (line != null) {
        sb.append(line);
        sb.append(System.lineSeparator());
        line = br.readLine();
    }
    String everything = sb.toString();
}

当我读取这样的字符串时，我通常希望每行都做一些字符串处理，所以我选择了这个实现。

虽然如果我只是想将文件读入字符串，我总是使用Apache Commons IO和类IOUtils.toString()方法。你可以在这里查看源代码:

http://www.docjar.com/html/api/org/apache/commons/io/IOUtils.java.html

FileInputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("foo.txt");
try {
    String everything = IOUtils.toString(inputStream);
} finally {
    inputStream.close();
}

在Java 7中甚至更简单:

try(FileInputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("foo.txt")) {     
    String everything = IOUtils.toString(inputStream);
    // do something with everything string
}

Java 11 Files.readString中引入了最直观的方法

import java.io.*;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;

public class App {
    public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException {
        String content = Files.readString(Paths.get("D:\\sandbox\\mvn\\my-app\\my-app.iml"));
        System.out.print(content);
    }
}

PHP几十年来一直享有这种特权!☺

org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils中的方法也可能非常方便，例如:

/**
 * Reads the contents of a file line by line to a List
 * of Strings using the default encoding for the VM.
 */
static List readLines(File file)

这里有一个简单的解决方案:

String content = new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get("sample.txt")));

或读作列表:

List<String> content = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("sample.txt"))

try {
  File f = new File("filename.txt");
  Scanner r = new Scanner(f);  
  while (r.hasNextLine()) {
    String data = r.nextLine();
    JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(data);
  }
  r.close();
} catch (FileNotFoundException ex) {
  JOptionPane.showMessageDialog("Error occurred");
  ex.printStackTrace();
}

我记录了15种用Java读取文件的方法，然后测试了它们在不同文件大小下的速度——从1kb到1gb，下面是最常用的三种方法:

java.nio.file.Files.readAllBytes() Tested to work in Java 7, 8, and 9. import java.io.File; import java.io.IOException; import java.nio.file.Files; public class ReadFile_Files_ReadAllBytes { public static void main(String [] pArgs) throws IOException { String fileName = "c:\\temp\\sample-10KB.txt"; File file = new File(fileName); byte [] fileBytes = Files.readAllBytes(file.toPath()); char singleChar; for(byte b : fileBytes) { singleChar = (char) b; System.out.print(singleChar); } } } java.io.BufferedReader.readLine() Tested to work in Java 7, 8, 9. import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.FileReader; import java.io.IOException; public class ReadFile_BufferedReader_ReadLine { public static void main(String [] args) throws IOException { String fileName = "c:\\temp\\sample-10KB.txt"; FileReader fileReader = new FileReader(fileName); try (BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(fileReader)) { String line; while((line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) { System.out.println(line); } } } } java.nio.file.Files.lines() This was tested to work in Java 8 and 9 but won't work in Java 7 because of the lambda expression requirement. import java.io.File; import java.io.IOException; import java.nio.file.Files; import java.util.stream.Stream; public class ReadFile_Files_Lines { public static void main(String[] pArgs) throws IOException { String fileName = "c:\\temp\\sample-10KB.txt"; File file = new File(fileName); try (Stream linesStream = Files.lines(file.toPath())) { linesStream.forEach(line -> { System.out.println(line); }); } } }