How to get just the parent directory name of a specific file

java groovy java-io
minil picture minil · Nov 19, 2011 · Viewed 210.7k times · Source

How to get ddd from the path name where the test.java resides.

File file = new File("C:/aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd/test.java");

Answer

Dave Newton picture Dave Newton · Nov 19, 2011

Use File's getParentFile() method and String.lastIndexOf() to retrieve just the immediate parent directory.

Mark's comment is a better solution thanlastIndexOf():

file.getParentFile().getName();

These solutions only works if the file has a parent file (e.g., created via one of the file constructors taking a parent File). When getParentFile() is null you'll need to resort to using lastIndexOf, or use something like Apache Commons' FileNameUtils.getFullPath():

FilenameUtils.getFullPathNoEndSeparator(file.getAbsolutePath());
=> C:/aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd

There are several variants to retain/drop the prefix and trailing separator. You can either use the same FilenameUtils class to grab the name from the result, use lastIndexOf, etc.

Related questions

Hibernate: Automatically creating/updating the db tables based on entity classes

I have the following entity class (in Groovy): import javax.persistence.Entity import javax.persistence.Id import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue import javax.persistence.GenerationType @Entity public class ServerNode { @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO) Long id String firstName String lastName } and …

Read More
Gradle does not find tools.jar

I am using javadoc doclets with gradle, so I need to use the package tools.jar, which is in the lib folder from the jdk (1.6.0_26 in my case). The point is that gradle does not take it automatically, so I …

Read More
Could not find method compile() for arguments Gradle

Looked around for this solution for much too long now, and I'm not sure if I missed it or just misstyped something, but my Gradle script will not compile. I am migrating to Gradle, and am very new with it. …

Read More