Relative Filepath

Question

Hi, i have a folder structure like this:
-root
-- data
-- images
in data i'm going to store some files that will contain some text. I'm trying to open them in a java source file in the root. How can i open them using a relative filepath (ie something like "\\data\data.dat") rather than a direct one (ie "c:\work\java\data\data.dat")?
clarkie

Answer 1

Thankyou, i think this should work now, but i'm
getting this error:
Main.java [31:1] cannot resolve symbol
symbol : constructor File (java.net.URL)
location: class java.io.File
File dataFile = new File(filePath);
i imported java.net.URL. is that right? or should i
import something else?
thanks again,
clarkieOops - that's what I get for not having the API memorized. There is a File(URI) constructor, but not File(URL).
Actually what I'd do is to rewrite your loadDataFile method to either take a URL (instead of a File) parameter or an InputStream.
To open the data as an InputStream:
InputStream inStream = getClass().getResourceAsStream("/data/java.dat");
Or if you already have the URL to it via getClass().getResource("/data/java.dat") then you can open that stream via the URL's openStream() method.