How to Get a Char From the Input in Java

1. Get a Char From the Input Using Scanner.next().charAt(0) in Java
2. Get a Char From the Input Using System.in.read() in Java
3. Get a Char From the Input Using InputStreamReader() in Java

This article will introduce several methods that we can use to input a character in Java. We can input and read a whole sentence in Java, but there are very few ways to read a single character. The following examples show a few ways and how to use them.

Get a Char From the Input Using Scanner.next().charAt(0) in Java

In the first example, we will use the Scanner class to take the input. We use scanner.next().charAt(0) to read the input as char. charAt(0) reads read the first character from the scanner.

import java.util.Scanner;

public class InputChar {
  public static void main(String[] args) d {
    Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
    System.out.println("Please input a character: ");
    char value = scanner.next().charAt(0);
    System.out.println("Character: " + value);
  }
}

Output:

Please input a character: 
h
Character: h

Get a Char From the Input Using System.in.read() in Java

The next example uses the System.in directly to call the read() method. System.in.read() reads one byte and returns an int. As every character represents a number we can convert the int to a character and vice versa.

Below, we read the input using System.in.read() and then cast it to a char to convert it into a character type.

import java.io.IOException;

public class InputChar {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    System.out.println("Please input a character: ");
    char value = (char) System.in.read();
    System.out.println("Character: " + value);
  }
}

Output:

Please input a character: 
j
Character: j

Get a Char From the Input Using InputStreamReader() in Java

Another method similar to the previous one uses an InputStreamRead() that provides the read() method just like System.in. We can use this read() method to input the character that will return an int and then cast it to a char as we have done in the example below.

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.Reader;

public class InputChar {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    System.out.println("Please input a character: ");
    Reader reader = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
    int characterAsInt = reader.read();

    char character = (char) characterAsInt;
    System.out.println("Character: " + character);
  }
}

Output:

Please input a character: 
/
Character: /