I have written the following method in an attempt to transfer a delimiter
separated text file into a 2D array for processing.

/**

    * Reads in the data from the source file into an array for processing.

    * calls findLengthAndBreadth to ascertain length and breadth of file.

    * The array is 2D and contains the delimited segments of each line of
the file

    *

    * @param  fileName is the name of the file to open

    * @param  delimiter - delimiting each line element

    * @return    String 2D array of delimited strings

    */

   public String[][] readDelimFileToArray(String fileName, String
delimiter)  {

       findLengthAndBreadth(fileName, delimiter); //call this method to set
the length and breadth used below

       wordArray = new String[fileLength][fileBreadth];   //set in the
previous method

       int i = 0;

       //now to read the file into the wordArray

       try{

           String line = openTextFile(fileName).readLine();  //call the
openTextFile

           while (line != null){   //has not reached the end

               wordArray[i] = line.split(delimiter);

               ++i;   //count the lines

               line = inFile.readLine( );   //read the next line

           }  //while

           }  //try

       catch (IOException e) {

           System.out.println(e);

           }

       return wordArray;

       }

It works fine if the delimiter passed as the 'delimiter' parameter in a
comma, whitespace or in fact any letter or string. If I pass a "*" however I
get this runtime error:

java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException.

It probably has something to do with the split method and perhaps * is a
special character.

Any ideas how I can get over this without too much change in my method?

Many thanks

Tarry Waterson

Ps The openTextFile(fileName) method looks like this:

private BufferedReader openTextFile(String fileName) {

       try{

          File inputFile = new File(fileName);   //create a new vitual
input file

          inData = new FileReader(inputFile); //create a new file reader
with this IP file

          inFile = new BufferedReader(inData);

       } //try

       catch(IOException e) {

           System.out.println(e);

           }  //catch

       return inFile;

       }