Question

I’m fairly new to Java. Currently trying to have the filename given in args[] passed to this FileReader but when I compile it says it can’t find the specified file. If I hardcode the filename it works fine. How’s this supposed to work?

public class StringSplit
{

   public void parseCommands
   {
     try
     {
       //not working, why? It works if I do FileReader fr= new FileReader("hi.tpl").
       FileReader fr= new FileReader(args);

     }

 public static void main (String[] args)// args holds the filename to be given to FileReader
 {
  if (args.length==0)
   {
     System.out.println("Error: Bad command or filename. Syntax: java [filename.tpl]);
     System.exit(0)
   }
   StringSplit ss= new StringSplit();
   ss.parseCommands();
  }

}

Answer 1

Your args parameter is not visible to parseCommands.

Plus args is an array. You probably want to send the first element in that array to parseCommands.

public void parseCommands(String fileName)
   {
     try
     {
       //not working, why? It works if I do FileReader fr= new FileReader("hi.tpl").
       FileReader fr= new FileReader(fileName);

     }
  }

public static void main (String[] args)// args holds the filename to be given to FileReader
 {
  if (args.length==0)
   {
     System.out.println("Error: Bad command or filename. Syntax: java [filename.tpl]);
     System.exit(0)
   }
   StringSplit ss= new StringSplit();
   ss.parseCommands(args[0]);
  }