What could I possibly pass to setText() that could make it hang?

Question

I'm writing my own text editor called Bix. I've discovered that if I load a file whose path was taken in as a command line argument (as opposed to getting it with a JFileChooser), the function doOpen() hangs at setText(). This often--well, always--happens when the program is called from a different folder via a shortcut.
The main function and the function doOpen are defined below:
public static void main(String[] args){
        Bix thisBix = new Bix();
        thisBix.show();
        if (args.length > 0){
            File f = new File(args[0]);
            thisBix.doOpen(f);
boolean doOpen(File f){
        boolean success = true;
        String fname = f.getName();
        String fpath = f.getPath();
        FileInputStream fis = null;
        String str = null;
        try {
            fis = new FileInputStream(f);
            int size = fis.available();
            byte[] bytes = new byte [size];
            fis.read(bytes);
            str = new String(bytes);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            success = false;
            JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this,
                    "The file " + fname + " could not be read.\nReason: " + e.getMessage(),
                    "File Loading Problem", JOptionPane.ERROR_MESSAGE);
        } finally {
            try {
                fis.close();
            } catch (IOException e2) {
                System.err.println(e2);
        if (str != null){
            if (confirmReconditionFile(str)){
                str = FileConditioner.conditionForEditing(str);
            } else {
                translateEnabledBox.setSelected(false);
                tabsAsSpacesRatio.setSelected(false);
            textArea.setText(str); //SOMETIMES SETTEXT HANGS HERE
            textArea.setCaretPosition(0);
            updateState(f);
            undo.discardAllEdits();
            previousFiles.push(f);
            return true;
        return false;
    }If I call System.out.println() with str just before I call setText(), the contents of the file are printed just fine.
What gives?
Any help would be appreciated...
tim

Answer 1

Probably you have troubles because you are trying to update your GUI outside of Swing event dispatching thread. Try to use SwingUtilites.invokeLater().
Denis Krukovsky
http://dotuseful.sourceforge.net/