resource file path

[Dennis Putnam]

I'm having trouble with getResourceAsStream. It seems inconstant (i.e. sometimes is seems to work but that may be an Eclipse thing that is unavailable with a standalone app) but essentially it is returning a null which I presume means it did not find the file. What is not clear is how to properly set the file path. The file I'm after in the jar is in a folder named resource. Thus I set the file to 'resource/run.properties'. As a *NIX admin that makes sense since it is relative to the current directory (i.e. the directory containing main). However, I have seen examples that use and absolute path ('/resource/run.properties') which implies to me it will look for an external file. So the question is, what is the proper path for my file as a parameter to getResourceAsStream? TIA.

P.S. Lest someone ask, the file does exist as I have verified it within the jar file.

[Jeff Verdegan]

getResource looks relative to the classpath, not the file system. I always have to go back and read closely, and the method exists in a couple of different places that refer to each other, so it takes some searching, but I think that a leading / means relative to the root of the classpath and no leading / means relative to the same subtree in the classpath as the current class. Or something like that.