Question

I am working in a desktop application for windows using Java. In my application, there is a requirement to search all .php. To do this, I use recursive methods.

import java.io.File;

public class Copier {

    public static void find(String source,String rep) {
        File src = new File(rep);
        if (src!= null && src.exists() && src.isDirectory()) {
            String[] tab = src.list();
            if (tab != null) {
                for(String s : tab) {
                    File srcc = new File(rep+"\\"+s);
                    if (srcc.isFile()) {  
                        if (srcc.getName().matches(".*"+source+"$")) {
                            System.out.println(s);
                        }
                    } else {
                        find(source,srcc.getAbsolutePath());
                    }
                }
            } else {
                //System.out.println(" list is null");
            }
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            find(".java", "C:\\");
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Is it possible to do this with an iterative algorithm?

Answer 1

I can’t see why you want to get rid of recursion although theoretically what you are looking for is possible.

But a good way to get a faster program could be to use a filefilter when you list the children of a directory. One for directories and one for matching files (this one should use a java.util.regexp.Pattern).

-updated

You can find the doc for the overload of File.list to use here. And for the pattern, you could something like a local variable (outside your loop or a data member if you use recursion).

 Pattern p = Pattern.compile( ".*"+source+".*" );
 boolean found = p.matcher( p.matcher( srcc.getName() ).matches() );

Oh, and by the way, don’t convert srcc into a file ! Work with strings and build as few objects as you can.