Java Scanner String input

Question

I'm writing a program that uses an Event class, which has in it an instance of a calendar, and a description of type String. The method to create an event uses a Scanner to take in a month, day, year, hour, minute, and a description. The problem I'm having is that the Scanner.next() method only returns the first word before a space. So if the input is "My Birthday", the description of that instance of an Event is simply "My".

I did some research and found that people used Scanner.nextLine() for this issue, but when I try this, it just skips past where the input should go. Here is what a section of my code looks like:

System.out.print("Please enter the event description: ");
String input = scan.nextLine();
e.setDescription(input);
System.out.println("Event description" + e.description);
e.time.set(year, month-1, day, hour, min);
addEvent(e);
System.out.println("Event: "+ e.time.getTime());    

And this is the output I get:

Please enter the event description: Event description
Event: Thu Mar 22 11:11:48 EDT 2012

It skips past the space to input the description String, and as a result, the description (which is initially set to a blank space - " "), is never changed.

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

When you read in the year month day hour minutes with something like nextInt() it leaves rest of the line in the parser/buffer (even if it is blank) so when you call nextLine() you are reading the rest of this first line.

I suggest you call scan.nextLine() before you print your next prompt to discard the rest of the line.