Question

I’m reading a file in via apache.commons.FtpClient.

This works fine 99.9% of the time but sometimes it just dies in the read() method…

InputStream inStream = ftp.retrieveFileStream(path + file.getName()); String fileAsString = '';  if(inStream == null){     return; } while((c = inStream.read()) != -1){ //this is where the code sometimes just hangs                   fileAsString += Character.valueOf((char)c);  } 

My question is what is the most reliable way to protect against this locking up the system indefinitely. Should I be setting a timer in a separate thread? Or is there a simpler way to do it?

Answer 1

Just from a quick look at the docs, if you did…

while (inStream.available() > 0 && (c = inStream.read()) != -1) 

It seems like it would double check that you can read without blocking before you actually read. I’m not certain on this though.