if your textfile (balls.txt) looks like this:

ball:  147.789,  134.801,  26.9737
ball:  112.6074,  83.0108, 11.2267
ball: 1175.982,  161.524,  27.2046
ball: 1163.498,  325.609,  19.7859
ball: 1115.718,  310.419,   4.00579
ball: 1163.047,  338.129,   1.39272

you could do:

1. ArrayList balls = new ArrayList();
2. void setup(){
3.   String lines[] = loadStrings("balls.txt");
4.   for(int i = 0; i < lines.length; i++){
5.     if (lines[i].startsWith("ball:")){
6.       float values[] = float(lines[i].split(":")[1].split( ",")); //very short and ugly !
   
7.       balls.add( new Ball(values[0], values[1], values[2]) );
8.     }
9.   }
10. }
11. class Ball{
12.   Ball(float x, float y, float z){
13.     println( " generated new Ball: "+ x +", "+y+", "+z);
14.   }
15. }

not sure if this also works in eclipse because of the float-conversion of an array.
also, it doesnt do much error-checking on the textfile!


thomas

of course its possible, but i prefer to work with an ArrayList (in this case) because its more handy, and very much faster ( because of the buffered resizing)

heres the code:

1. //ArrayList balls = new ArrayList();
2. Ball balls[] = new Ball[0];
3. void setup(){
4.   String lines[] = loadStrings("balls.txt");
5.   for(int i = 0; i < lines.length; i++){
6.     if (lines[i].startsWith("ball:")){
7.       float values[] = float(lines[i].split(":")[1].split( ","));
8.       //balls.add( new Ball(values[0], values[1], values[2]) );
9.       balls = (Ball[]) append(balls, new Ball(values[0], values[1], values[2]) );
10.     }
11.   }
12. }
13. class Ball{
14.   Ball(float x, float y, float z){
15.     println( " generated new Ball: "+ x +", "+y+", "+z);
16.   }
17. }