new File(parent, child) when child is absolute

[Weijun Wang]

On 4/27/13 3:34 PM, Alan Bateman wrote:
> On 27/04/2013 04:14, Weijun Wang wrote:
>> I thought that in this case parent is just ignored and it's still the
>> child itself. Turns out this is not true, and
>>
>>    new File("/tmp", "/etc/passwd") is /tmp/etc/passwd
>>
>> Is this really useful in any way?
> I agree this isn't always obvious but this is how this method was
> originally specified (JDK1.1, maybe JDK1.0). I've no doubt that
> attempting to change it now would cause breakage, particularly Windows
> where a file path such as "/etc/passwd" is a relative path. Can you use
> java.nio.file.Path for what you are doing? It has resolve methods that
> do the right thing.

Great. I should have thought of it. Path/Files/Paths are precious.

Thanks
Max

>
> -Alan.