Why is Java 7 Files.walkFileTree throwing exception on encountering a tar file on remote drive

Question

Im using Files.WalkFileTree() to navigate folder and counting audio files, but there is a problem when it encounters a tar file, it seems to be treating it as an actual folder I was expecting it to just skip over it.

I cannot see any options that let me control this behaviour

Code:

package com.jthink.songkong.fileloader;


import com.jthink.songkong.cmdline.SongKong;
import com.jthink.songkong.ui.MainWindow;

import java.nio.file.*;
import java.nio.file.attribute.BasicFileAttributes;
import java.util.concurrent.Callable;
import java.util.logging.Level;

/**
 * Count the number of files that can be loaded, for information purposes only
 */
public class CountFilesinFolder implements Callable<Boolean> {
    public static class CountFiles
            extends SimpleFileVisitor<Path> {
        private int fileCount = 0;
        private final PathMatcher matcher;

        CountFiles(String pattern) {
            matcher =
                    FileSystems.getDefault()
                            .getPathMatcher("regex:" + pattern);
        }

        /**
         * Find Music file
         *
         * @param file
         * @param attr
         * @return
         */
        @Override
        public FileVisitResult visitFile(Path file,
                                         BasicFileAttributes attr) {
            Path name = file.getFileName();
            if (name != null && matcher.matches(name)) {
                fileCount++;
            }
            return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
        }

        public int getFileCount() {
            return fileCount;
        }
    }


    private Path scanDir;
    public CountFilesinFolder(Path scanDir) {
        this.scanDir = scanDir;
    }

    public Boolean call() {
        CountFiles countFiles = null;
        try {
            countFiles = new CountFiles("^(?!._).*[.](?:mp3|mp4|m4p|m4b|m4a|ogg|flac|wma)$");
            Files.walkFileTree(scanDir, countFiles);
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            MainWindow.logger.log(Level.SEVERE, "Unable to find file for deriving base folder", e);
        }
        MainWindow.logger.severe("Music File Count:"+countFiles.getFileCount());
        SongKong.setMaxProgress(countFiles.getFileCount());
        return true;
    }
}

gives this stacktrace

java.nio.file.NoSuchFileException: Z:\Scratch\fred.tar
    at sun.nio.fs.WindowsException.translateToIOException(WindowsException.java:79)
    at sun.nio.fs.WindowsException.rethrowAsIOException(WindowsException.java:97)
    at sun.nio.fs.WindowsException.rethrowAsIOException(WindowsException.java:102)
    at sun.nio.fs.WindowsDirectoryStream.<init>(WindowsDirectoryStream.java:86)
    at sun.nio.fs.WindowsFileSystemProvider.newDirectoryStream(WindowsFileSystemProvider.java:526)
    at java.nio.file.Files.newDirectoryStream(Files.java:411)
    at java.nio.file.FileTreeWalker.walk(FileTreeWalker.java:179)
    at java.nio.file.FileTreeWalker.walk(FileTreeWalker.java:199)
    at java.nio.file.FileTreeWalker.walk(FileTreeWalker.java:69)
    at java.nio.file.Files.walkFileTree(Files.java:2591)
    at java.nio.file.Files.walkFileTree(Files.java:2624)
    at com.jthink.songkong.fileloader.CountFilesinFolder.call(CountFilesinFolder.java:68)
    at com.jthink.songkong.fileloader.CountFilesinFolder.call(CountFilesinFolder.java:15)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:334)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:166)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)

but that is a a remote drive (nas drive), I get no such error on local drive

EDIT Implemented the following based o the answer below I thought worked

    @Override
            public FileVisitResult preVisitDirectory(Path dir, 
BasicFileAttributes attrs)
                    throws IOException {
                if(dir.endsWith(".tar"))
                {
                    return FileVisitResult.SKIP_SUBTREE;
                }
                return super.preVisitDirectory(dir, attrs);
            }

but my testing was amiss, it doesnt in fact work because the code in FileTreeWalker that fails is called before the previsit method

try {
            DirectoryStream<Path> stream = null;
            FileVisitResult result;

            // open the directory
            try {
                stream = Files.newDirectoryStream(file);
            } catch (IOException x) {
                return visitor.visitFileFailed(file, x);
            } catch (SecurityException x) {
                // ignore, as per spec
                return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
            }

            // the exception notified to the postVisitDirectory method
            IOException ioe = null;

            // invoke preVisitDirectory and then visit each entry
            try {
                result = visitor.preVisitDirectory(file, attrs);
                if (result != FileVisitResult.CONTINUE) {
                    return result;
                }

Answer 1

Workaround for the problem at hand:

But implement a visitFileFailed and you should be ok.

public class MyFileVisitor extends SimpleFileVisitor<Path> {
    @Override
    public FileVisitResult visitFileFailed(Path file, IOException exc) throws IOException {
        if (file.toString().endsWith(".tar")) {
            return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
        }
        return super.visitFileFailed(file, exc);
    }
}

Update: If we look closer we can see that walkFileTree uses the Files.readAttributes which turns to the current provider in play: WindowsFileSystemProvider.readAttributes to determine if a path is a directory.

As someone mentioned in the comments I also dont think the fault is in the Java-implementation but the OS-native-call that returns the wrong attribute

If you wanted to do a workaround for this, one option would be to implement your own FileSystem that wraps the WindowsFileSystem implementation transparently, except readAttributes returns .tar-paths as file instead of dir.

Answer 2

Tar-archives could be seen as directory (bundle of files). You can prevent this error by implementing method preVisitDirectory in your visitor simply returning FileVisitResult.SKIP_SUBTREE for tar-archives:

public static class CountFiles
        extends SimpleFileVisitor<Path> {
    ...
    public FileVisitResult preVisitDirectory(Path dir, BasicFileAttributes attrs)
             throws IOException {
        if (dir.toString().toLowerCase().endsWith(".tar")) {
            return SKIP_SUBTREE;
        }
        return super.preVisitDirectory(dir, attrs);
    }
    ...
}