File class

[neeta3]

I am a beginner in Java. I do not understand the importance of the File class. In the real programming world, why and when would i need to use it? Please provide some business contexts that will help me clear my understanding about the File class.

 

[juliaroberts]

In the OOPS way of doing things.. we take everything as objects. Similarily to represent a File we have a File object which encapsulates certain attributes of a file and provides behaviour similar pertaining to a file.<br><br>It's an abstract representation of a file.

 

[fenris]

I have recently used the File class in a program that sorts and catalogs directories. I used it because it allows for the easy retrieval of file properties.<br><br>The first part of the program recursively searches the directory for files and it returns an array of strings. The strings would be of the form &quot;c:\java\test.class&quot; without the quotes. From this you can't get any information about the file's size, date stamp, etc. from there I create the file objects by passing the string array to a method that converts the string array to a File array, something like this:<br><br>public File[] convert(String[] list)<br>{<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;File [] newList = new File[list.length];<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;for(int i = 0; i &lt; list.length; i++)<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;newList<i> = new File(list<i>);<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;return newList;<br>}<br><br>It makes it much easier to output the path, file name and attributes to a text file or database.<br><br>Hope this clears up your problem somewhat....<br><br> <p> fenris<br><a href=mailto:fenris@hotmail.com>fenris@hotmail.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>