An image location problem

Question

Hello everyone, I have written a few programs that load images,Objects etc. When I move one of these to a different computer, I have been resetting the String that specifies the directory where the images/Objects are stored manually. This got really annoying so I decided to work out how to make the program determine the directory itself. I tried this:
(in the class that loads the image)
String location = this.getClass().getResource("/myImage.png").getPath();
where the image is in the same directory as the class that loads the image. The problem is that URL's replace spaces with %20 which means when I try to create a File from the String the File does not exist.
I know that I can overcome this with a lot of class's such as ImageIcon as their constuctors can take URL's but I would still like to get a class's location in a String that is compatible with a Files constructor.
Any help would be appreciated

Answer 1

I'm unclear on how you're distributing your program to other computers, but if you end up with a structure like this:
%whereverUserInstallsItAndThereforeWorkingDirectoryIs%
  |
  --images
    |
    --player
    |
    --opponent
  |
  --soundsThen to load the file avater.gif in the player subdirectory of the images directory, you would want to get "images/player/avatar.gif." You shouldn't need to know where the working directory is or what it's name is or anything like that.