Files

[freesoft_2000]

Hi everyone,

I have a rather silly question but please bear with me for a while. If lets say i have a string which has the contents

    "C:\\p\\kol\\pki.txt"

The thing with the above string is that if i use as an argument in a
fileinputstream it will only work on windows platform.

Basically my question is how do i convert the above string to a platform independent form.

I hope someone can help me with this

Thank You

Yours Sincerely

Richard West

[Belisarius]

To some extent, you can't. "C:" is a uniquely Windows concept. If you're working with relative files, however (where you aren't giving an absolute path), you can use "File.separator" to get the proper seperator character for the given operating system. So, if you're on a Unix machine, you would get "/", whereas on Windows you're get "\\".

[freesoft_2000]

Hi everyone,

Belisarius can i do this to create a platform independent file

   
     String str1 = "C:\\abc\\efg.exe"
     File file1 = new File(str1);
     String str2 = file1.getCanonicalPath();
     //Now i will the instance of str2 for any file streams

OR THIS

    String str1 = "C:\\abc\\efg.exe"
     File file1 = new File(str1);
     String str2 = file1.getAbsolutePath();
     //Now i will the instance of str2 for any file streams

Will what i do create a platform independent file?

By the way

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone

Thank You

Yours Sincerely

Richard West

[Belisarius]

Like I said, in that form it can't be truely independent. In Unix, there is no "C:".

The main difference between absolute and canonical is that the latter resolves the "." and ".." characters as well as things like sim-links, whereas the former doesn't.

They won't switch around the slashes for you.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? I might be able to help you make the whole thing system independant.

[freesoft_2000]

Hi everyone,

Belisarius what i am trying to do is to write a function in which i input
a string say "C:\\a\\b\\c.txt" and the function returns a string which has been converted to the its equivalent according to which os the program is running on

Do you know how this can be achieved

Any help is greatly appreciated

Thank You

Yours Sincerely

Richard West

[Belisarius]

Ok, but why? So they can load up a saved file or a config file? In that case, the user themselves will make the change to the correct OS type.

Say I store a document on my desktop in Windows, and want to load it in your program. You pop up a dialogue asking me where the file is. I say "C:\Documents and Settings\Belisarius\Desktop\myfile.txt". If we were to do the same thing in Linux, I'd tell the program it was save to my home directory at "/home/Belisarius/myfile.txt". It's not something you really need to worry about. It's also not really a problem you can solve it someone say the file is at "C:\Documents and Settings\Belisarius\Desktop\myfile.txt" while in Linux; there is no such place.