Question

This is probably a very basic question but I tried various options and it didn’t work out and hence requesting help. I want to create a file inside a specified directory. If the file already exists, I want to append data to it. Below is what I tried:

    var DirectoryName: String = "LogFiles"
    var dir: File = new File(DirectoryName);  
    dir.mkdir();

    var ActorID: String = "1"  
    var FileName: String = DirectoryName + File.separator + "Actor_" + ActorID + ".log"
    val FileObj: File = new File(FileName)

//   FileObj.getParentFile().mkdirs();
//   FileObj.createNewFile();

    var FileWriterObj: FileWriter = null
    var FileExistsFlag = 0

    if (!FileObj.exists())
    {    
     FileWriterObj = new FileWriter(FileObj.getName())
    }
    else
    {
      FileWriterObj = new FileWriter(FileObj.getName(), true)
      FileExistsFlag = 1
    }

    var writer = new PrintWriter(FileWriterObj)

    if(FileExistsFlag == 0)
        writer.write("new file")
    else
    writer.append("appending to old file")

Internet search asks to use the below:

FileObj.getParentFile().mkdirs();
FileObj.createNewFile();

But it creates empty files inside the directory and creates new files outside the directory and appends to it. And also few posts suggests that there is no need to use createNewFile() to create a file.

I tried giving various path formats like below:

var DirectoryName: String = "../LogFiles"
var DirectoryName: String = "/home/ms/Desktop/Project/LogFiles"

But still it does not create the files inside the directory.
Can you please point me what I’m missing?

OS: Ubuntu 12.04

Answer 1

You should be using FileObj.getAbsolutePath, rather than FileObj.getName. getName just returns the name of the file, which explains why it was always being placed in the current directory.

The empty files issue could be solved by calling writer.close() at the end of your function. I don’t think it’s necessary to use createNewFile