Programatically count the number of files in a folder

Question

Hi Folks
I need to programatically count the number of files in a given folder and return the value to a Program Unit to be included in further processing.
Can anyone point me in the right direction. I have looked at UTL_FILE but this does not offer what I want.
Does anyone know of an obscure package in Oracle that I could use?
I'm using 9i in a W2K environment.
Many thanks
Simon Gadd

Answer 1

Hi,
following a java based solution i found somewhere on Tom Kyte's AskTom forum.
GRANT JAVAUSERPRIV to TESTUSER;
dbms_java.grant_permission( 'TESTUSER', 'SYS:java.io.FilePermission', 'c:\', 'read' );
create global temporary table DIR_LIST
( filename varchar2(255) )
on commit delete rows
create or replace and compile java source named "DirList"
as
  import java.io.*;
  import java.sql.*;
  public class DirList
    public static void getList(String directory)
                       throws SQLException
      File path = new File( directory );
      String[] list = path.list();
      String element;
      for(int i = 0; i < list.length; i++)
          element = list;
#sql { INSERT INTO DIR_LIST (FILENAME)
VALUES (:element) };
create or replace procedure get_dir_list( p_directory in varchar2 )
as language java
name 'DirList.getList( java.lang.String )';
exec get_dir_list( 'c:\temp' );
select count(*) from dir_list;