Re: Where is the 'default' directory ?

From:

Eric Sosman <Eric.Sosman@sun.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:43:46 -0400

Message-ID:

<1218833011.232566@news1nwk>

Ian Semmel wrote:

If there is one, that is.

What I mean, is that if I have an ini file (or any file), where do I put
it so that I can open it from a package which is not the base package
such as in

package mcu.p1.p2

Properties p = new Properties ();
try
{
p.load ( new FileInputStream ( "myfile.ini" ) );

Does this try to open the file in the directory 'mcu' or 'p2' or wherever ?

     First, the Properties class has no influence over the location
of the file: You give the Properties object an opened FileInputStream,
and that's all it sees. The location has been determined before
Properties even enters the picture.

     So, where does FileInputStream look? Since "myfile.ini" doesn't
specify a location, it looks in the current working directory, the
one named by System.getProperty("user.dir"). The location has
nothing to do with the class or package structure, and everything to
do with the circumstances under which the JVM was launched.

     For something class-specific, try java.util.prefs.Preferences.
If the data itself doesn't fit conveniently in a Preferences, you
could use Preferences to store the location of a Properties file.
Much depends on the problem you're trying to solve ...

--
Eric.Sosman@sun.com