Try one thing at a time. Planning everything in advance is overwhelming and ignores the thought that you might learn a better way to do things along the way.
In fact, let's start with doing no things from the assignment. Make this say "true". You can put this code in another class that you might or might not turn in when you're done.
For that you have to write a new class MyFileAnalyzer (or whatever you want to call it) and write a getLineCount() method that just returns 0. That's well under 10 lines and makes sure you're comfortable with those steps.
Then make this say "true" with a one line
test file:
For that you have to add code to read the file - you can lift that from the sample link above - and count the lines.
If you take tiny steps you can have many small victories which is fun, and show us exactly where you're stuck, if & when you are.
[ November 22, 2007: Message edited by: Stan James ]