Recursively list files in Java

Question

How do I recursively list all files under a directory in Java? Does the framework provide any utility?

I saw a lot of hacky implementations. But none from the framework or nio

Answer 1

Here a simple but perfectly working solution using recursion:

public static List<Path> listFiles(String rootDirectory)
{
    List<Path> files = new ArrayList<>();
    listFiles(rootDirectory, files);

    return files;
}

private static void listFiles(String path, List<Path> collectedFiles)
{
    File root = new File(path);
    File[] files = root.listFiles();

    if (files == null)
    {
        return;
    }

    for (File file : files)
    {
        if (file.isDirectory())
        {
            listFiles(file.getAbsolutePath(), collectedFiles);
        } else
        {
            collectedFiles.add(file.toPath());
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

My version (of course I could have used the built in walk in Java 8 ;-) ):

public static List<File> findFilesIn(File rootDir, Predicate<File> predicate) {
        ArrayList<File> collected = new ArrayList<>();
        walk(rootDir, predicate, collected);
        return collected;
    }

    private static void walk(File dir, Predicate<File> filterFunction, List<File> collected) {
        Stream.of(listOnlyWhenDirectory(dir))
                .forEach(file -> walk(file, filterFunction, addAndReturn(collected, file, filterFunction)));
    }

    private static File[] listOnlyWhenDirectory(File dir) {
        return dir.isDirectory() ? dir.listFiles() : new File[]{};
    }

    private static List<File> addAndReturn(List<File> files, File toAdd, Predicate<File> filterFunction) {
        if (filterFunction.test(toAdd)) {
            files.add(toAdd);
        }
        return files;
    }