Chapter 9
Accessing Files and Directories
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER
- How you can access the file system on your computer
- How you can inspect files and directories
- How to create new files and directories
- How to move and copy files and directories
- How you can move and copy a directory and its contents
- How you can examine the contents of a directory tree
In this chapter, you explore how you identify, access, and manipulate files and directories (sometimes referred to as folders) on your hard drive. This includes the ability to create, copy, move, and delete files and directories.
You learn how you read and write files starting in the next chapter. Java has more than one way to work with files and directories. The original capability came with JDK 1.0. This was augmented in JDK 1.4 with NIO (New I/O). I only discuss the latest and greatest facility for file operations referred to as NIO2 that was introduced in JDK 7.
ACCESSING THE FILE SYSTEM
The starting point for working with files and directories is a java.nio.file.FileSystem object. A FileSystem object encapsulates the file storage system on your computer. What this storage system consists of and how it is organized depends on the operating system you are using. The FileSystem class has no public constructors so you need another way to create such an object.
The java.nio.file.FileSystems class defines static factory methods for file systems. You can obtain the FileSystem object that encapsulates the storage system on ...
