Reading an array from a file

[Bud4java]

How do I initialize an array that has been called from a file? There will be 5 values in the array. So should my file "input.dat" have:
5 (number of values)
4 (value)
6 (value)
7 (value)
2 (value)
7 (value)

Example:
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(
new FileReader("input.dat"));

and I'm lost after that.

Thanks,
Bud

[Bud4java]

Some progress has been made...

I've been able to create the text file with data, and create the array. The thing that I cannot get it to do is to use the first number in the file as the size of the array. The array in the text file is a set of scores, and there are 5 scores. The first number is supposed to set the size of the array, so the first number is 5, followed by the actual 5 values in the array.

Is this possible? If so, how would I setup the declaration/initialization statement?
Right now I have:

BufferedReader fr = new BufferedReader (new FileReader ("goals.txt"));int score [] = new int [5];
// read all scores from the files goals.txt
for (int i = 0 ; i < 5 ; i++)
{


goal  = Integer.parseInt(fr.readLine ());
}
// display the nine goals on the screen
System.out.print ("The  goals are: ");
for (int i = 0 ; i < 5; i++)
{
if (i < 4)
// add a comma if not the last hole
System.out.print (score  + ", ");
else
// no comma and a prinln for the last output
System.out.println (score );
} // end loop



The text file contains:
5
99
88
79
98
100

but it still wants to consider the "5" as part of the data in the array instead of it being the size of the array.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for your help & consideration,
Bud

[paradox814]

take a long at java.io.ObjectOutput as this has already been created for you...

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/io/ObjectOutput.html
no sense reinventing the wheel