How to scan a folder in Java?

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Not sure how you want to represent the tree? Anyway here’s an example which scans the entire subtree using recursion. Files and directories are treated alike. Note that File.listFiles() returns null for non-directories.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    Collection<File> all = new ArrayList<File>();
    addTree(new File("."), all);
    System.out.println(all);
}

static void addTree(File file, Collection<File> all) {
    File[] children = file.listFiles();
    if (children != null) {
        for (File child : children) {
            all.add(child);
            addTree(child, all);
        }
    }
}

Java 7 offers a couple of improvements. For example, DirectoryStream provides one result at a time – the caller no longer has to wait for all I/O operations to complete before acting. This allows incremental GUI updates, early cancellation, etc.

static void addTree(Path directory, Collection<Path> all)
        throws IOException {
    try (DirectoryStream<Path> ds = Files.newDirectoryStream(directory)) {
        for (Path child : ds) {
            all.add(child);
            if (Files.isDirectory(child)) {
                addTree(child, all);
            }
        }
    }
}

Note that the dreaded null return value has been replaced by IOException.

Java 7 also offers a tree walker:

static void addTree(Path directory, final Collection<Path> all)
        throws IOException {
    Files.walkFileTree(directory, new SimpleFileVisitor<Path>() {
        @Override
        public FileVisitResult visitFile(Path file, BasicFileAttributes attrs)
                throws IOException {
            all.add(file);
            return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
        }
    });
}

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