What is java.util.Scanner in Java?

Overview

There are different default packages available in Java to facilitate the programmer. The java.util is one such package that contains a collection of different classes and frameworks.

Scanner is a class available in the java.util package. It is used to take input from a user for any primitive datatype (int, float, string, and so on).

Syntax

Before using the Scanner class, we need to import it.

import java.util.Scanner;

We can then create an object of the Scanner class by using the following syntax:

Scanner sc= new Scanner(System.in);

We are using sc as an example here, but we can also use any other variable name instead.

Parameters

  • System.in: This represents the object of the input stream. If we want to read the input from a file, then System.in is replaced by an object of the file class.

Example code

The example below shows how we can take input from a user using the Scanner class object.

import java.util.Scanner;
class ScannerExample {
    public static void main(String args[]){
        Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);
        System.out.println("Enter your Roll number");
        int id = sc.nextInt();
        System.out.println("Enter your grade");
        char grade = sc.next().charAt(0);
        System.out.println("Roll Number :" + id);
        System.out.println("Grade :" + grade);
    }
}

Code explanation

  • Line 1: We import the Scanner class.
  • Line 4: We create the object sc of the Scanner class.
  • Lines 5–6: We take an integer input from the user.
  • Lines 7–8: We take a character input from the user.
  • Lines 9–10: We display the inputs entered by the user.

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