Figuring out drive letters on WinX

[paul wheaton]

I have an applet that is doing the security dance to get access to all sorts of disk stuff. Now my boss says "when you are at the root directory, I want to click on .. and see a list of valid drive letters" - can such a thing be done?

[Anonymous]

I haven't done it in an applet, but assuming the permissions work out you can use <code>File.listRoots()</code>, as in
<pre><code>
import java.io.*;
public class Rooter {
public static void main( String[] args ) {
File f[] = File.listRoots();
for (int i = 0; i < f.length; i++) {
System.out.println( f[i] );
//not f[i].getName()
}
}
}
</code></pre>
Notice that <code>getName()</code> returns an empty string in this case, so I just used <code>toString()</code> implicitly - I sense that's telling me something about the nature of a <code>File</code> object but it's too early to figure out what. More coffee...

[paul wheaton]

listRoots() is a JDK 1.2 method. The applet uses the JDK 1.1. Do you know of any 1.1 solutions?

[Anonymous]

Nope, at least no good ones. van der Linden implies that there was no way to do this prior to 1.2. Your post implies you're on Windows, so here's a hack that might get you by - note that if you don't have a disk in the floppy it won't catch that one. Put your sunglasses on, this is ugly.
<pre><code>
import java.io.*;
public class Rooter {
public static void main( String[] args ) {
File f;
char[] c = new char[1];
try {
for (c[0] = 'A'; c[0] <= 'Z'; c[0]++) {
f = new File( new String( c ) + ":\\" );
if (f.isDirectory()) {
System.out.println( f );
}
}
} catch (SecurityException e) {}
}
}
</code></pre>

[paul wheaton]

I used something like that and as long as I start at 'C', it works great!