Question

I have a project where I’m compiling files to locations relative to getClass().getResource("/"). How can I get File objects for these locations?

When I try getClass().getResource("/nonExisting"), they return null. How can I resolve the paths?

Answer 1

There’s no reason to expect existent resources to be normal files; they could be buried inside a jar-file somewhere on your classpath.

With non-existent resources, the situation is even worse; even if you could guarantee in the abstract that it is a non-existent normal file, it could be a non-existent normal file in any of the top-level directories in your classpath; there’s no sensible way to decide which directory it would have been in, had it existed. (For example, if your classpath contains both classes and testClasses, then /nonExisting could be either classes/nonExisting or testClasses/nonExisting.)