Program to get all files within a directory in Java

Question

I'm working on this program to get all the files in the directory. For some reason I am getting a NullPointerException on Line 16. I don't know why though since this is a template that seemed to work in class with our teacher. Thanks.

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;

public class FindDirectories {
    public static void main(String[] args) { 
        if (args.length == 0) { 
            args = new String[] { ".." }; 
        }

        List<String> nextDir = new ArrayList<String>(); 
        nextDir.add(args[0]); // either the one file, or the directory
        try { 
            while(nextDir.size() > 0) {     // size() is num of elements in List 
                File pathName = new File(nextDir.get(0)); // gets the element at the index of the List 
                String[] fileNames = pathName.list();  // lists all files in the directory
                for(int i = 0; i < fileNames.length; i++) { 
                  File f = new File(pathName.getPath(), fileNames[i]); // getPath converts abstract path to path in String, 
                                                                    // constructor creates new File object with fileName name   
                  if (f.isDirectory()) { 
                     System.out.println(f.getCanonicalPath()); 
                     nextDir.add(f.getPath()); 
                  } 
                  else {
                      System.out.println(f);
                  }
               } 
               nextDir.remove(0); 
            } 
        } 
        catch(IOException e) { 
            e.printStackTrace();  
        }       
    } 
}

Answer 1

Check out the Javadoc for File.list(). Specifically:

Returns null if this abstract pathname does not denote a directory, or if an I/O error occurs.

In your code pathName.list(); must be returning null so pathName does not represent a valid directory, or an IO error occurred trying to get a list of files from that directory.

Answer 2

Use bellow snippet to get all the files from all the sub directories:

import java.io.File;

/**
 *
 * @author santoshk
 */
public class ListFiles {

     File mainFolder = new File("F:\\personal");
     public static void main(String[] args)
     {
         ListFiles lf = new ListFiles();
         lf.getFiles(lf.mainFolder);
     }
     public void getFiles(File f){
         File files[];
         if(f.isFile())
             System.out.println(f.getAbsolutePath());
         else{
             files = f.listFiles();
             for (int i = 0; i < files.length; i++) {
                 getFiles(files[i]);
             }
         }
     }
}