How to create a file in java (not a folder) ?

Question

Perhaps somewhat embarassing, but after some hours I still cannot create a file in Java...

File file = new File(dirName + "/" + fileName);
try
{
    // --> ** this statement gives an exception 'the system cannot find the path'
    file.createNewFile();
    // --> ** this creates a folder also named a directory with the name fileName
    file.mkdirs();
    System.out.println("file != null");
    return file;
}
catch (Exception e)
{
    System.out.println(e.getMessage());
    return null;
}

What am I missing here?

bruno conde · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-04 13:54:00Z

25

Try creating the parent dirs first:

File file = new File(dirName + File.separator + fileName);
try {
    file.getParentFile().mkdirs();
    file.createNewFile();
    System.out.println("file != null");
    return file;
}
catch (Exception e)
{
    System.out.println(e.getMessage());
    return null;
}

answered Aug 4, 2009 at 13:54

bruno conde

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8 Comments

Gerard Over a year ago

thank you, confusing that java does not seem to differentiate files from folders

Bombe Over a year ago

How should Java do that? What is “a”, a file or a directory? Why should “foo.dat” be a file and not a directory? You have to tell Java what you want. If you tell Java to create a directory named “index.html”, it will happily create a directory with the name of “index.html”. :)

Gerard Over a year ago

your remark comes from a programmers perspective, my confusion was from a user perspective, because a computer-user differentiates between folders and files; java could have chosen to support human beings e.g. with a filetype enum

Alex Over a year ago

Many file systems do not differentiate between files and folders. (folders are files) Java is merely mirroring this design.

rob Over a year ago

@Gerard: The Java type "File" is just an abstraction of a filesystem object. The above code will work equally well on any JVM and on any OS. Whether you choose to treat the given File object as a file or directory is up to you. If you're just querying the filesystem and need to know whether an existing filesystem object is a file or directory, you should call one of the boolean methods File.isDir() or File.isFile(). I always try to use one of these more specific methods instead of File.exists().

|

Fathah Rehman P · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-07 08:59:30Z

1

String dirName="c:\\dir1\\dir2";
    String fileName="fileName.txt";
    File file = new File(dirName + "/" + fileName);
    try {
        new File(dirName).mkdirs();   // directory created here
        file.createNewFile();  // file created here
        System.out.println("file != null");
        return file;
    }catch(Exception e)
         {
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
            return null;
         }

answered Jun 7, 2012 at 8:59

Fathah Rehman P

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