Using Class and Constructor to create instances on the fly

Question

hi,
i want to be able to create instances of classes as specified by the user of my application. i hold the class names as String objects in a LinkedList, check to see if the named class exists and then try and create an instance of it as follows.
the problem im having is that the classes i want to create are held in a directory lower down the directory hierarchy than where the i called this code from.
ie. the classes are held in "eccs/model/behaviours" but the VM looks for them in the eccs directory.
i cannot move the desired classes to this folder for other reasons and if i try to give the Path name to Class.forName() it will not find them. instead i think it looks for a class called "eccs/model/behaviours/x" in the eccs dir and not navigate to the eccs/model/behaviours dir for the class x.
any ideas please? heres my code for ye to look at in case im not making any sense:)
//iterator is the Iterator of the LinkedList that holds all the names of the
//classes we want to create.
//while there is another element in the list.
while(iterator.hasNext())
//get the name of the class to create from the list.
String className = (String) iterator.next();
//check to see if the file exists.
if(!doesFileExist(className))
System.out.println("File cannot be found!");
//breake the loop and move onto the next element in the list.
continue;
//create an empty class.
Class dynamicClass = Class.forName(className);
//get the default constructor of the class.
Constructor constructor = dynamicClass.getConstructor(new Class[] {});
//create an instance of the desired class.
Behaviour beh = (Behaviour) constructor.newInstance(new Object[] {});
private boolean doesFileExist(String fileName)
//append .class to the file name.
fileName += ".class";
//get the file.
File file = new File(fileName);
//check if it exists.
if(file.exists())
return true;
else
return false;
}

Answer 1

ok ive changed it now to "eccs.model.behaviours" and it seems to work:) many thanks!!!
by the following you mean that instead of using the method "doesFileExist(fileName)" i just catch the exception and throw it to something like the System.out.println() ?
Why don't you simply try to call Class.forName() and catch the exception if it doesn't exist? Because as soon as you package up your class files in a jar file (which you should) your approach won't work at all.i dont think il be creating a JAR file as i want the user to be able to create his/her own classes and add them to the directory to be used in the application. is this the correct way to do this??
again many thanks for ye're help:)