Java Cookbook

Creating a File

Problem

You need to create a new file on disk, but you don’t want to write into it.

Solution

Use a java.io.Fileobject’s createNewFile( ) method.

Discussion

You could easily create a new file by constructing a FileOutputStream or FileWriter (see Section 9.4). But then you’d have to remember to close it as well. Sometimes you want a file to exist, but you don’t want to bother putting anything into it. This might be used, for example, as a simple form of interprogram communication: one program could test for the presence of a file, and interpret that to mean that the other program has reached a certain state. Here is code that simply creates an empty file for each name you give:

import java.io.*;

/**
 * Create one or more files by name.
 * The final "e" is omitted in homage to the underlying UNIX system call.
 */
public class Creat {
    public static void main(String[] argv) throws IOException {

        // Ensure that a filename (or something) was given in argv[0]
        if (argv.length == 0) {
            System.err.println("Usage: Creat filename");
            System.exit(1);
        }

        for (int i = 0; i< argv.length; i++) {
            // Constructing a File object doesn't affect the disk, but
            // the createNewFile(  ) method does.
            new File(argv[i]).createNewFile(  );
        }
    }
}