code: public static List<String> getFileAsLines(String sFileName) throws Exception {
  
  	FileInputStream fIn = null;
  	BufferedReader fileReader = null;
  
  	try {
  	    //open the file 
  	    fIn = new FileInputStream(sFileName);
  	    fileReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fIn));
  
  	    //create a Vector for output
  	    ArrayList<String> output = new ArrayList<String>();
  
  	    //read the file line by line, append lines to the Vector
  	    String line = null;
  
  	    while ((line = fileReader.readLine()) != null) {
  		output.add(line);
  	    }
  
  	    return output;
  
  	} catch (Exception e) {
  
  	    throw e;
  
  	} finally {
  
  	    fIn.close();
  	    fileReader.close();
  
  	}
  
      }
docs: Returns the contents of an ASCII file as a List of Strings.
  
  This method throws any fileIO errors.
  
  @param sFileName Full file path.
  @return String[] String array containing the contents of the file, one
  element per line
  @throws Exception Any fileIO errors