Controlling File Dialogs

Many times you'll want some control over the FileDialog. You may want to specify that it should start looking in a particular directory, or that only text files should be shown. Java lets you do this. To start the FileDialog off in a particular directory call the FileDialog's setDirectory(String dir) method where dir is the path to the directory. That is

fd.setDirectory("/usr/tmp");

You can even set the FileDialog to point at a particular file using setFile(String filename). However if you already know the file name why do you need to bring up a FileDialog? More likely is that you'll want to look for a particular type of file, for instance text files. To make this happen you need to use a FilenameFilter to specify which files you'll accept. The key method is

setFilenameFilter(FilenameFilter fnf).

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Last Modified April 24, 1998
Copyright 1997, 1998 Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu