Menu
While writing answers around SO, a user tried pointing out that java.io.File should not be used in new code, instead he argues that the the new object java.nio.Files should be used instead; he linked to this article.
Now I have been developing in Java for several years now, and have not heard this argument before; since reading his post I have been searching, and have not found many other sources that confirm this, and personally, I feel like many of the points argued in the article are weak and that if you know how to read them, errors thrown by the File class will generally tell you exactly what the issue is.
As I am continually developing new code my question is this:
Is this an active argument in the Java community? Is Files preferred over File for new code? What are the major advantages / disadvantages between the two?
671
It is not deprecated because it is not broken. Or more precisely, because the Java team and/or Oracle management do not think it is sufficiently broken to warrant the level of disruption and pushback that deprecation of File would cause1.
Java NIO enables you to do non-blocking IO. For instance, a thread can ask a channel to read data into a buffer. While the channel reads data into the buffer, the thread can do something else. Once data is read into the buffer, the thread can then continue processing it.
Java For Testers Java NIO package provide one more utility API named as Files which is basically used for manipulating files and directories using its static methods which mostly works on Path object.
The documentation that you linked give the answer:
The java.nio.file package defines interfaces and classes for the Java virtual machine to access files, file attributes, and file systems. This API may be used to overcome many of the limitations of the java.io.File class. The toPath method may be used to obtain a Path that uses the abstract path represented by a File object to locate a file. The resulting Path may be used with the Files class to provide more efficient and extensive access to additional file operations, file attributes, and I/O exceptions to help diagnose errors when an operation on a file fails.
186
File has a newer implementation: Path. With a builder Paths.get("..."). And Files has many nice utility functions with better implementations too (move instead of the sometimes failing File.renameTo).
A Path maintains its file system. Hence you can copy out of a zip file system ("jar:file:..... .zip") some path to another file system and vice versa.
File.toPath() may help an incremental transition.
The utilities alone in Files make a move to the newer classes profitable.
34
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
