Question

I want to write a Java application that validate files and directories according to certain naming standards. The program would let you pick a directory and would recursively analyze — giving a list of files/directories that do not match the given rules.

Eventually I want the user to be able to input rules, but for now they would be hard coded. Oh, and this would need to be cross-platform.

I’m have a working knowledge of basic Java constructs but have no experience with libraries and have not had much luck finding demos/code samples for this type of thing.

I would love suggestions for what trees to start barking up, pseudo-code — whatever you feel would be helpful.

EDIT: I’m not trying to remove anything here, just get a recursive listing of any names that break certain rules (e.g. no spaces or special characters, no directories that start with uppercase) in the chosen directory.

Answer 1

I would like to use Commons IO, I think DirectoryWalker will help you.

Here is the sample for checking and removing “.svn” dir

  public class FileCleaner extends DirectoryWalker {

    public FileCleaner() {
      super();
    }

    public List clean(File startDirectory) {
      List results = new ArrayList();
      walk(startDirectory, results);
      return results;
    }

    protected boolean handleDirectory(File directory, int depth, Collection results) {
      // delete svn directories and then skip
      if (".svn".equals(directory.getName())) {
        directory.delete();
        return false;
      } else {
        return true;
      }

    }

    protected void handleFile(File file, int depth, Collection results) {
      // delete file and add to list of deleted
      file.delete();
      results.add(file);
    }
  }