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Determining if a File or Directory exist
Posted on: June 7, 2007 By Deepak Kumar

In this section, you will learn how to determine a file or directory exit or not.

Determining if a File or Directory Exist

This is a very simple problem. You just have to determine whether a file or directory exists or not. If it exists it returns true otherwise in the else condition, it retunes vice-versa.

The following program creates an object of File class and checks whether the given file exists or not by using exists() method of the class.

We have used following methods:

exists(): It checks whether the file or directory denoted by this pathname exists or not.

Code of this program is given below:


import java.io.*;



public class FileOrDirectoryExists{

  public static void main(String args[]){

  File file=new File("Any file name or 

   directory whether exists or not");

  boolean exists = file.exists();

  if (!exists) {

  // It returns false if File or directory does not exist

  System.out.println("the file or directory 

  you are searching does not exist : " + exists);

  

  }else{

  // It returns true if File or directory exists

  System.out.println("the file or 

  directory you are searching does exist : " + exists);

  }

  }

}

The output of the program is given below:

C:\java>java FileOrDirectoryExists
the file or directory you are searching does not exist : false

Download this example:

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Comments

Mihai
June 10, 2011
misleading comments

does not exist : false should be does not exist : true since it doesn't exist

Mario
June 13, 2013
jaOgHZcRfRqRWTQDO

It's a reielf to find someone who can explain things so well

kapella
September 7, 2011
method not found

I am trying to use this example about checking if a file exists. It seems like my compiler is not finding the method 'exists()' since it is asking me to create a class with the same name. Thank you.

Jevgenijs
March 4, 2012
Thanks for your post: true

if (!exists) { System.out.println("the file or directory you are searching does exist : " + exists); does exists? FALSE mens not exists } else { System.out.println("the file or directory you are searching does exist : " + exists); does exists? TRUE mens exists it's about logic, as i know when you code on java you need to write it like a book :D but thanks for your post Helped me a lot. i'm now on Java courses!

crystal x
May 18, 2012
gui implementation

could you give me example how to implementationon Java GUI?

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