I did this but when I use LineNumberReader it seems to make
BufferedReader.readLine() return null. Any ideas how I can "reset" the
BufferedReader so it goes back to the start of the file (and it's not the
reset() method).

If I remove the LineNumberReader() stuff in the while loop then the
BufferedReader works fine.

<code>

public Record[] readScoreboard() throws IOException {
    FileReader fr = new FileReader(_scores_file);
    BufferedReader br  = new BufferedReader(fr);
    LineNumberReader lnr = new LineNumberReader(fr);
 String str_line;
 int line_count = 0;
 boolean flag = true;
 String str_count;

 while (flag) {
        str_count = lnr.readLine ();
           if (str_count == null) {
            flag = false;
           }
           else {
            line_count++;
           }
    }

 //System.out.println("lines: " + line_count);
 int t = 0;
 int x = 0;
 int y = 0;
 int m = 0;

 for (int i = 1; i <= line_count; i++) {
  System.out.println("here");
  try {
         str_line = br.readLine();
         System.out.println(str_line); // this displays "null"

      }
      catch (NumberFormatException e) {
       JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(new JDialog(), e.getMessage());
      }
     }
  catch (NullPointerException e) {
         //JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(new JDialog(), e.getMessage());
        }
 }

      //input done, so close the stream
      br.close();

 return _records;
}

</code