TextArea Input from Event Listener

[Sweats]

After a button is clicked I would like text to be displayed in a text area that I have on the same GUI. I have accomplished this but after each new entry to the output text area, the line previously there gets erased. I understand that this is the normal functionality of setText. I was wondering if there was anyway that I can keep entering input but be able to keep the previous entries, in other words not have the previous input erased.

code inside event listener:
output_TextArea.setText("Make a left turn \n");

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[timw]

Keep the original input in a StringBuffer and append the new input to it. Then setText on the JTextArea with the whole contents of the StringBuffer.

Or, do a getText from the JTextArea into a StringBuffer, append the new input, the write whole contents of StringBuffer back to the JTextArea.

StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(myTextArea.getText());
sb.append("some new input");//substitute your new input here
myTextArea.setText( sb.toString() );

... or extend the JTextArea and add a method like appendText(String text) which internally does the above.

Tim

 

[Sweats]

Worked out perfectly. Thanks a lot.