[java] How can I clear the Scanner buffer in Java?

I have something like this:

    Scanner in=new Scanner(System.in);
    int rounds = 0;
    while (rounds < 1 || rounds > 3) {
        System.out.print("How many rounds? ");
        if (in.hasNextInt()) {
            rounds = in.nextInt();
        } else {
            System.out.println("Invalid input. Please try again.");
            System.out.println();
        }
        // Clear buffer
    }
    System.out.print(rounds+" rounds.");

How can I clear the buffer?

Edit: I tried the following, but it does not work for some reason:

while(in.hasNext())
    in.next();

Other people have suggested using in.nextLine() to clear the buffer, which works for single-line input. As comments point out, however, sometimes System.in input can be multi-line.

You can instead create a new Scanner object where you want to clear the buffer if you are using System.in and not some other InputStream.

in = new Scanner(System.in);

If you do this, don't call in.close() first. Doing so will close System.in, and so you will get NoSuchElementExceptions on subsequent calls to in.nextInt(); System.in probably shouldn't be closed during your program.

(The above approach is specific to System.in. It might not be appropriate for other input streams.)

If you really need to close your Scanner object before creating a new one, this StackOverflow answer suggests creating an InputStream wrapper for System.in that has its own close() method that doesn't close the wrapped System.in stream. This is overkill for simple programs, though.

Try this:

in.nextLine();

This advances the Scanner to the next line.

Use the following command:

in.nextLine();

right after

System.out.println("Invalid input. Please Try Again.");
System.out.println();

or after the following curly bracket (where your comment regarding it, is).

This command advances the scanner to the next line (when reading from a file or string, this simply reads the next line), thus essentially flushing it, in this case. It clears the buffer and readies the scanner for a new input. It can, preferably, be used for clearing the current buffer when a user has entered an invalid input (such as a letter when asked for a number).

Documentation of the method can be found here: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Scanner.html#nextLine()

Hope this helps!

This should fix it...

Scanner in=new Scanner(System.in);
    int rounds = 0;
    while (rounds < 1 || rounds > 3) {
        System.out.print("How many rounds? ");
        if (in.hasNextInt()) {
            rounds = in.nextInt();
        } else {
            System.out.println("Invalid input. Please try again.");
            in.next(); // -->important
            System.out.println();
        }
        // Clear buffer
    }
    System.out.print(rounds+" rounds.");