JSR199 FileObjects don't obey general contract of equals.

[Jonathan Gibbons]

Really?

Compiler gets the canonical path of one file successfully.

Network goes down (It has been known to happen, even at Sun.)

Compiler tries to get the canonical path of a similar file, using an  
NFS path like /net/machine.domain/file, which fails because  
machine.domain is inaccessible. java.io.File throws an IOException  
because it cannot determine the canonical file.

The compiler falls back to using getAbsoluteFile, and incorrectly  
determines these files are different, even though they might have  
been symlink equivalent had the network been working.

That's not a bug in java.io.File.  It is arguably a bug in the  
compiler for using File.getCanonicalFile in JavaFileObject.equals.

-- Jon


On Jun 21, 2007, at 10:39 AM, Peter Ahé wrote:

> On 6/21/07, Jonathan Gibbons <Jonathan.Gibbons at sun.com> wrote:
>> My concern would be the unspecified nature of IOExceptions, and
>> whether network failure outside the virtual machine could lead the
>> code to incorrectly determine that two files were different, when in
>> fact they were "symlink-equal" in a part of the path that is no
>> longer accessible by virtue of the network failure.
>
> Unless somebody is deliberately trying to foil the compiler, that
> situation must be characterized as a bug in java.io.File, not the
> compiler.
>
> Cheers,
> Peter