Making New Directories
Problem
You need to create a directory.
Solution
Use java.io.File
’s mkdir( )
or
mkdirs( )
method.
Discussion
Of the two methods used for creating directories, mkdir( )
creates just one directory while mkdirs( )
creates any parent directories that are needed. For
example, if /home/ian
exists and is a directory,
then the calls:
new File("/home/ian/bin").mkdir( ); new File("/home/ian/src").mkdir( );
will succeed, whereas:
new File("/home/ian/once/twice/again").mkdir( );
will fail, assuming that the directory once
does
not exist. If you wish to create a whole path of directories, you
would tell File
to make all the directories at
once by using mkdirs( )
:
new File("/home/ian/once/twice/again").mkdirs( );
Both variants of this command return true
if they
succeed and false
if they fail. Notice that it is
possible (but not likely) for mkdirs( )
to create
some of the directories and then fail; in this case, the newly
created directories will be left in the filesystem.
Notice the spelling: mkdir( )
is all lowercase.
While this might be said to violate the normal Java naming
conventions (which would suggest mkDir( )
as the
name), it is the name of the underlying operating system call and
command on both Unix and DOS (though DOS allows
md as an alias at the command-line level).
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