Splitting filenames using system file separator symbol

Question

I have a complete file path and I want to get the file name.

I am using the following instruction:

String[] splittedFileName = fileName.split(System.getProperty("file.separator")); String simpleFileName = splittedFileName[splittedFileName.length-1]; 

But on Windows it gives:

java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Unexpected internal error near index 1 \  ^ 

Can I avoid this exception? Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

The problem is that \ has to be escaped in order to use it as backslash within a regular expression. You should either use a splitting API which doesn't use regular expressions, or use Pattern.quote first:

// Alternative: use Pattern.quote(File.separator) String pattern = Pattern.quote(System.getProperty("file.separator")); String[] splittedFileName = fileName.split(pattern); 

Or even better, use the File API for this:

File file = new File(fileName); String simpleFileName = file.getName(); 

Answer 2

When you write a file name, you should use System.getProperty("file.separator").

When you read a file name, you could possibly have either the forward slash or the backward slash as a file separator.

You might want to try the following:

fileName = fileName.replace("\\", "/"); String[] splittedFileName = fileName.split("/")); String simpleFileName = splittedFileName[splittedFileName.length-1];