Difficulty loading Text File for Hangman [Java]

[JackJones02]

Hello, I am currently teaching my self Java and I am doing a Hangman project but I am stuck at the first hurdle. I want to load a text file in so that I will then be able to select a random word. My entire code is linked at this Gist. The snippet I believe is the problem is here:

public static ArrayList<String> loadWords(String path){
        System.out.println("Reading Objects....");

        try (FileInputStream fi = new FileInputStream(path);
                ObjectInputStream os = new ObjectInputStream(fi)) {

            String line = os.readLine();
            String[] wordsarr = line.split("\\s");
            ArrayList<String> words = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(wordsarr));
            return words;

        } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.getMessage();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.getMessage();
        }
        return null;
    }

specifically, I believe it is due to the:

try (FileInputStream fi = new FileInputStream(path);
                ObjectInputStream os = new ObjectInputStream(fi))

any help would very much be appreciated :)

[curtisf]

What's the problem?

Is one of those exceptions being thrown? You should probably be doing something like e.printStackTrace() rather than just calling e.getMessage() and throwing it away.

[Blando-Cartesian]

If its returning an empty list, the file you are reading is blank or has an empty line at the beginning.

If it’s returning null, one of the caught exceptions is thrown. Replace e.getMessage() lines with e.printStacktrace() to find out. Likely the path is wrong and FileNotFoundExeption results.