Using BufferedReader:

System.out.println("Please type your name and press Enter.");

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
try {
    String name = reader.readLine();
    System.out.println("Hello, " + name + "!");
} catch(IOException e) {
    System.out.println("An error occurred: " + e.getMessage());
}

The following imports are needed for this code:

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

Using Scanner:

System.out.println("Please type your name and press Enter");

Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
String name = scanner.nextLine();

System.out.println("Hello, " + name + "!");

The following import is needed for this example:

import java.util.Scanner;

To read more than one line, invoke scanner.nextLine() repeatedly:

System.out.println("Please enter your first and your last name, on separate lines.");
    
Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
String firstName = scanner.nextLine();
String lastName = scanner.nextLine();
    
System.out.println("Hello, " + firstName + " " + lastName + "!");

There are two methods for obtaining Strings, next() and nextLine(). next() returns text up until the first space (also known as a “token”), and nextLine() returns all text that the user inputted until pressing enter.

Scanner also provides utility methods for reading data types other than String. These include:

scanner.nextByte();
scanner.nextShort();
scanner.nextInt();
scanner.nextLong();
scanner.nextFloat();
scanner.nextDouble();
scanner.nextBigInteger();
scanner.nextBigDecimal();

Prefixing any of these methods with has (as in hasNextLine(), hasNextInt()) returns true if the stream has any more of the request type. Note: These methods will crash the program if the input is not of the requested type (for example, typing “a” for nextInt() ). You can use a try {} catch() {} to prevent this (see: Exceptions)

Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in); //Create the scanner
scanner.useLocale(Locale.US); //Set number format excepted
System.out.println("Please input a float, decimal separator is .");
if (scanner.hasNextFloat()){ //Check if it is a float
    float fValue = scanner.nextFloat(); //retrive the value directly as float
    System.out.println(fValue + " is a float");
}else{
    String sValue = scanner.next(); //We can not retrive as float
    System.out.println(sValue + " is not a float");
}

Using System.console:

String name = System.console().readLine("Please type your name and press Enter%n");

System.out.printf("Hello, %s!", name);

//To read passwords (without echoing as in unix terminal)
char[] password = System.console().readPassword();

Advantages: