Getting File System Root Directory

[Hal Vaughan]

I've seen install programs that search a hard drive for previous instances
of a program, or to find installs of other needed programs.

I need to search a hard drive for any installations of OpenOffice. I know
in *nix I can start by using "/" as the file name and doing a recursive
listing of the file system from there. (Yes -- I know about permissions to
read directories -- that's another issue I've already solved.)

How do I find the root level for Windows boxen? For example, if a Windows
box has C:, D:, and E: drives, how do I get a list of all the drives so I
can scan them -- AND how can I tell which ones have media in them so I
don't scan floppies or CD-ROMs that are empty?

Thanks!

Hal

[Phil...]

Re: Getting File System Root Directory

For finding the drives on windows box,
do you need to be machine independent or
are you willing to use JNI?

There is a windows function that returns a long
with one bit for each of the possible 26 drives A thru Z.

I have a JNI program that uses it to find out how
much disk space there is on my C: and D: drives that
I can send you as an example.

By convention, A and B are floppy, beyond that I don't
know how to tell if a drive is a CD-ROM, tape, or
mapped network drive. There may be more MS library
functions that do that though.

Phil...

"Hal Vaughan" <hal@thresholdd igital.com> wrote in message
news:asjeb.6427 60$o%2.301439@s ccrnsc02...[color=blue]
> I've seen install programs that search a hard drive for previous instances
> of a program, or to find installs of other needed programs.
>
> I need to search a hard drive for any installations of OpenOffice. I know
> in *nix I can start by using "/" as the file name and doing a recursive
> listing of the file system from there. (Yes -- I know about permissions[/color]
to[color=blue]
> read directories -- that's another issue I've already solved.)
>
> How do I find the root level for Windows boxen? For example, if a Windows
> box has C:, D:, and E: drives, how do I get a list of all the drives so I
> can scan them -- AND how can I tell which ones have media in them so I
> don't scan floppies or CD-ROMs that are empty?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Hal[/color]

[Hal Vaughan]

Re: Getting File System Root Directory

Phil... wrote:
[color=blue]
> For finding the drives on windows box,
> do you need to be machine independent or
> are you willing to use JNI?[/color]

I'm trying to keep it platform independent. At this point I'm making sure
it works on Linux and Windows. I want to test Mac in a month or two. (I
hear about all I need to worry about is a different file separator
character, which shouldn't be a problem since I get that from either the
System properties or the File class.)

Although I am adding in code to handle a few things that might differ from
system to system.
[color=blue]
> There is a windows function that returns a long
> with one bit for each of the possible 26 drives A thru Z.
>
> I have a JNI program that uses it to find out how
> much disk space there is on my C: and D: drives that
> I can send you as an example.
>
> By convention, A and B are floppy, beyond that I don't
> know how to tell if a drive is a CD-ROM, tape, or
> mapped network drive. There may be more MS library
> functions that do that though.
>
> Phil...[/color]

I found one way to do it -- if I detect I'm on Windows, I can cycle through
the entire list of strings ("A:", "B:", etc) and check if each exists.
It's a small detail, but I was hoping there was an "elegant" cross-platform
way to specify the root directory (like "/" in *nix). I even looked
through Swing to see if there was anything in JFileChooser that would let
me make a filechooser and get the info, without ever showing the chooser.

Thanks, again, Phil, for the info!

Hal
[color=blue]
> "Hal Vaughan" <hal@thresholdd igital.com> wrote in message
> news:asjeb.6427 60$o%2.301439@s ccrnsc02...[color=green]
>> I've seen install programs that search a hard drive for previous
>> instances of a program, or to find installs of other needed programs.
>>
>> I need to search a hard drive for any installations of OpenOffice. I
>> know in *nix I can start by using "/" as the file name and doing a
>> recursive
>> listing of the file system from there. (Yes -- I know about permissions[/color]
> to[color=green]
>> read directories -- that's another issue I've already solved.)
>>
>> How do I find the root level for Windows boxen? For example, if a
>> Windows box has C:, D:, and E: drives, how do I get a list of all the
>> drives so I can scan them -- AND how can I tell which ones have media in
>> them so I don't scan floppies or CD-ROMs that are empty?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Hal[/color][/color]

[Dale Mitchell]

Re: Getting File System Root Directory

File[] roots = File.listRoots( );