Since the author did not specify whether they require a solution for Java versions that have been EoL'd (by both Sun and IBM, and these are technically the most widespread JVMs), and due to the fact that most people seem to have answered the author's question before it was specified that it is a text (non-binary) file, I have decided to provide my answer.

First of all, Java 6 has generally reached end of life, and since the author did not specify he needs legacy compatibility, I guess it automatically means J7 or above (J7 is not yet EoL'd by IBM). So, we can look right at the file I/O tutorial: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/io/legacy.html

Prior to the Java SE 7 release, the java.io.File class was the mechanism used for file I/O, but it had several drawbacks.

• Many methods didn't throw exceptions when they failed, so it was impossible to obtain a useful error message. For example, if a file deletion failed, the program would receive a "delete fail" but wouldn't know if it was because the file didn't exist, the user didn't have permissions, or there was some other problem.
• The rename method didn't work consistently across platforms.
• There was no real support for symbolic links.
• More support for metadata was desired, such as file permissions, file owner, and other security attributes. Accessing file metadata was inefficient.
• Many of the File methods didn't scale. Requesting a large directory listing over a server could result in a hang. Large directories could also cause memory resource problems, resulting in a denial of service.
• It was not possible to write reliable code that could recursively walk a file tree and respond appropriately if there were circular symbolic links.

Oh well, that rules out java.io.File. If a file cannot be written/appended, you may not be able to even know why.

We can continue looking at the tutorial: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/io/file.html#common

If you have all lines you will write (append) to the text file in advance, the recommended approach is https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/nio/file/Files.html#write-java.nio.file.Path-java.lang.Iterable-java.nio.charset.Charset-java.nio.file.OpenOption...-

Here's an example (simplified):

Path file = ...;
List<String> linesInMemory = ...;
Files.write(file, linesInMemory, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

Another example (append):

Path file = ...;
List<String> linesInMemory = ...;
Files.write(file, linesInMemory, Charset.forName("desired charset"), StandardOpenOption.CREATE, StandardOpenOption.APPEND, StandardOpenOption.WRITE);

If you want to write file content as you go: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/nio/file/Files.html#newBufferedWriter-java.nio.file.Path-java.nio.charset.Charset-java.nio.file.OpenOption...-

Simplified example (J8 or up):

Path file = ...;
try (BufferedWriter writer = Files.newBufferedWriter(file)) {
    writer.append("Zero header: ").append('0').write("\r\n");
    [...]
}

Another example (append):

Path file = ...;
try (BufferedWriter writer = Files.newBufferedWriter(file, Charset.forName("desired charset"), StandardOpenOption.CREATE, StandardOpenOption.APPEND, StandardOpenOption.WRITE)) {
    writer.write("----------");
    [...]
}

These methods require minimal effort on the author's part and should be preferred to all others when writing to [text] files.