Comments on: Some JSR 203 Examples

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 03:34:43 +0000

@Orion: I’ve actually had discussions about that with various folks over the last couple years. Because the underpinnings of the new file API are based on the concept of pluggable filesystems, there is actually the potential for an enormous amount of support.

For instance, you could build a virtual file system that actually worked in-memory so that as your tests wrote to files, they were not actually touching disk, which of course means that it’s easy to clean up, easy to write tests that don’t depend on the runtime filesystem environment, and easy to avoid things like Windows file locking madness. If I recall correctly, no such thing will ship with the jdk but someone has already built a proof of concept.

By: Orion Letizi

Orion Letizi — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:09:04 +0000

Have there been discussions about how to mock this stuff up for tests? One of the things that chaps me about the existing java filesystem api is that they are all concrete classes and very difficult to mock up for unit tests.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 02:16:28 +0000

@Walter: I’d say opening a file is an awfully common use case. There are really only a few basic ways to open access to a file – the classic Input/OutputStreams of course, and the new SeekableByteChannel which works from ByteBuffers.

When you create a path (from a Filesystem or the helper Paths class), if the path is invalid it will throw an InvalidPathException (unchecked). The rules defining what paths are invalid depends on the underlying file system (and possibly the file store as well).

@Bruce: right on. This is why I ask for feedback… :) And also why I don’t write code in a text editor anymore. Fixed!

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:22:19 +0000

new StandardWatchEventKind[ ENTRY_CREATE, ENTRY_DELETE, ENTRY_MODIFY]

new StandardWatchEventKind[] {ENTRY_CREATE, ENTRY_DELETE, ENTRY_MODIFY}

By: Walter

Walter — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:25:12 +0000

Seems odd that Path would have methods to get, e.g., an OutputStream. There are plenty of ways to open a file, why would they encumber Path with all of them or (alternately) declare some to be better than others? Seems to suck in a lot of otherwise unnecessary type linkage. Convenient if that’s your use case, though.

Do illegally named Paths barf during creation or during access?