Finding filenames in a specefik directory

Question

Hi There
I would like to find all files in a specifik windows directory, an I would like to sort them on the base of the timestamp in the "Modified" colom in the windows Explorer.
Can this be done and if so them how?
Whit my debest respect to all
Regards
Tolstrup

Answer 1

Member xraynaud has the right idea however I believe he meant to use the File class's lastModified method. In any event his implementation (subtracting the two longs) looses precision and will subsequently not return a properly sorted array. See attached sample working code that also uses a FileFilter to only return files (excluding directories) from the specified directory.
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
public class SortByDate
public static void main(String args[])
  File[] files = new File("c:/").listFiles(new FileFilter() {
   public boolean accept(File pathname) {
    return !pathname.isDirectory();
  Arrays.sort(files, new Comparator() {
   public int compare(Object obj1, Object obj2) {
    long l1 = ((File) obj1).lastModified();
    long l2 = ((File) obj2).lastModified();
    return l1 > l2 ? 1 : (l1 < l2 ? -1 : 0);
  for (int i = 0; i < files.length; i++)
   System.out.println(files[i] + "\t" + new Date(files.lastModified()));