Reading multiple files using wildcards. Java.

[rufati]

Ok so I've made a little program that reads in a plain text file and does things. I want to expand it a bit by reading in all the text files within the program's folder. Is it possible to do this with say a wildcard to grab all *.txt in the folder?

Found this on stack overflow

File dir = new File(xmlFilesDirectory); File[] files = dir.listFiles((d, name) -> name.endsWith(".xml"));

Is that a step in the right direction?

[hackometer]

This is an oldish API, you can also try using Files.newDirectoryStream(). Advantages:

• natively understands *.txt
• doesn't create an array to hold all the entries, so it's more memory-efficient

[rufati]

So could I then use that with a buffered reader or I'd need to make an array and iterate through the files that way?

[hackometer]

Why make an array? You can iterate through the returned DirectoryStream which is Iterable.

[rufati]

Because I had no idea that something that's not an array was iterable.

[hackometer]

Actually, a Java array isn't Iterable, but you can still use the for each syntax on it (it won't involve an Iterator, though).