Question

The following line of Dart code shows true for existing files when run from the Terminal but false when run from IntelliJ or WebStorm. Can someone explain why and how to set up Idea editors so that it will return the same results as the Terminal run.

bool pathExists(String path) => new File(path).existsSync();

Update

After tinkering I’ve now found out that if I create the project in WebStorm 5 using ‘open directory’ it works fine for all(WebStorm, IntelliJ, and the Terminal). The problem is when I try to create the project in IntelliJ 12 as there seems to be no equivalent to open directory it seems to try to create a Java project. WebStorm seems to have better support for creating a Dart application from scratch at the moment. See answers below for instructions.

Answer 1

You really should show the whole program and how you run it, otherwise I can only guess. And my guess would be that you are passing a relative path to the function and you run the program from a different directory than IntelliJ.

Let’s say I have this Dart program:

import 'dart:io';

bool pathExists(String path) => new File(path).existsSync();

main() {
  print(pathExists('books.txt'));
}

This program will print true when the books.txt file exists in the current directory. I happen to have such file in my home directory, so when I do

ladicek@argondie:~$ dart check_file.dart

it will obviously print true. But if I run the same program from another directory, it will surely print false. And that’s probably what happens in your case.

You should check the Run/Debug Configuration in IntelliJ, it lets you configure the directory where the program is started.