Check if a path represents a file or a folder

Question

I need a valid method to check if a String represents a path for file or a directory. What are valid directory names in Android? As it comes out, folder names c

Answer 1

Assuming path is your String.

File file = new File(path);

boolean exists =      file.exists();      // Check if the file exists
boolean isDirectory = file.isDirectory(); // Check if it's a directory
boolean isFile =      file.isFile();      // Check if it's a regular file

See File Javadoc

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Or you can use the NIO class Files and check things like this:

Path file = new File(path).toPath();

boolean exists =      Files.exists(file);        // Check if the file exists
boolean isDirectory = Files.isDirectory(file);   // Check if it's a directory
boolean isFile =      Files.isRegularFile(file); // Check if it's a regular file

Answer 2

There is no way for the system to tell you if a String represent a file or directory, if it does not exist in the file system. For example:

Path path = Paths.get("/some/path/to/dir");
System.out.println(Files.isDirectory(path)); // return false
System.out.println(Files.isRegularFile(path)); // return false

And for the following example:

Path path = Paths.get("/some/path/to/dir/file.txt");
System.out.println(Files.isDirectory(path));  //return false
System.out.println(Files.isRegularFile(path));  // return false

So we see that in both case system return false. This is true for both java.io.File and java.nio.file.Path