RE: java.io.File#toURI()

[Jeroen Frijters]

Stuart Ballard wrote:
> Jeroen Frijters wrote:
> > Otherwise the "c:\foo.txt" style paths are handled 
> incorrectly. For new
> > File("c:\\foo.txt").toURI().toString(), Sun returns 
> "file:/c:/foo.txt".
> > 
> > Of course, there are also the UNC paths, which are even worse.
> > \\server\share\file is turned into 
> file:////server/share/file by Sun.
> > Maybe this method needs to move to VMFile. Sigh.
> 
> No, don't do that!
> 
> The solutions for Windows are different than for Unix, but that's no 
> reason to have to reinvent the wheel in every VM on those platforms. 
> Remember that even IKVM can be used on Unix and there are other 
> Classpath VMs that can run on Windows (I think).

Believe me, I'm not forgetting that IKVM can be used on Unix. I was
thinking more along the lines of using platform specific functionality
to convert files to URIs. In IKVM, for example, I might be able to use
System.UriBuilder to make a URI from a path, in a platform specific way,
without making IKVM itself platform specific.

> I agree it's important to get file path handling in general solved 
> correctly for Windows (last time I checked the methods for 
> getting the absolute path of a file were broken on windows too),
> but the solution should be part of Classpath itself, not any
> particular VM.

There are still lots of bugs in Classpath's path handling on Windows.
I've tried on multiple occasions to get started on fixing this, but I
get stuck every time. :-(

Regards,
Jeroen