Data structure for holding the content of a parsed CSV file

Question

I'm trying to figure out what the best approach would be to parse a csv file in Java. Now each line will have an X amount of information. For example, the first line can have up to 5 string words (with commas separating them) while the next few lines can have maybe 3 or 6 or what ever. My problem isn't reading the strings from the file. Just to be clear. My problem is what data structure would be best to hold each line and also each word in that line? At first I thought about using a 2D array, but the problem with that is that array sizes must be static (the 2nd index size would hold how many words there are in each line, which can be different from line to line). Here's the first few lines of the CSV file: ``` 0,MONEY 1,SELLING 2,DESIGNING 3,MAKING DIRECTOR,3DENT95VGY,EBAD,SAGHAR,MALE,05/31/2011,null,0,10000,07/24/2011 3KEET95TGY,05/31/2011,04/17/2012,120050 3LERT9RVGY,04/17/2012,03/05/2013,132500 3MEFT95VGY,03/05/2013,null,145205 DIRECTOR,XKQ84P6CDW,AGHA,ZAIN,FEMALE,06/06/2011,null,…

Accepted Answer

You could use a `Map>`. The keys being the line numbers in the csv file, and the List being the words in each line. An additional point: you will probably end up using `List#get(int)` method quite often. Do not use a linked list if this is the case. This is because `get(int)` for linked list is O(n). I think an `ArrayList` is your best option here. Edit (based on AlexWien's observation): In this particular case, since the keys are line numbers, thus yielding a contiguous set of integers, an even better data structure could be `ArrayList>`. This will lead to faster key retrievals.

Data structure for holding the content of a parsed CSV file

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