Problems opening files via shortcuts on windows

[Jim Showalter]

Hello,

Here is the problem. Assume that 'c:\link' is a shortcut to the directory
'c:\foo\bar\dir' and that the latter contains the file info.txt.

The following prints false

File f = new File("c:\link\info.txt");
System.out.println(f.canRead());

while this prints true

File f = new File("c:\foo\bar\dir\info.txt");
System.out.println(f.canRead());

Thus, links don't appear to be followed in Windows (the above returns true
for both cases on Solaris). Any suggestions on how to resolve the shortcut
to the proper target? I have had no success with any of the *path* methods
in the File class.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

Hello,

Here is the problem. Assume that 'c:\link' is a shortcut to the directory
'c:\foo\bar\dir' and that the latter contains the file info.txt.

How is "C:\link" a shortcut? Is it the NTFS's linking support, or is it
a Windows shortcut? If it's the latter, then C:\link is nothing more
than a file saying (in essence) "C:\foo\bar\dir", and is seen as a file
by anyone who uses systems tools to open it.