java read file from relative path in project and .jar

Question

I tried that:

public class FilePath {

    public File return_path () {

        URL url = getClass().getResource("file.txt"); 
        File file = new File(url.getPath()); 
        return file;
    }
}

If I print it, the output is a path like this: "/media/dates/%20uni%c3%a0/Java/project%20java%20201/SearchInFiles/build/classes/searchinfiles/hello.txt"

I have created this method in order not to redefine everytime the path of the file that eventually a .jar will have to read.

There could be a problem with the strange characters?

Btw when I call it from main class:

public static void main(String[] args) {

        FilePath path = new FilePath(); 
        File file = path.return_path();
        System.out.println (file);

try{
BufferedReader input = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));

            String line;

    int i = 0;
    while ((line = input.readLine ()) != null)
    {
         System.out.println(line);
    }
            input.close();
        } 
        catch(Exception ex){
           System.err.println("Error: " + ex.getMessage());
        }
}

I have the "file not existing" error.

How can I solve it? Thanks

Answer 1

Your urls are escaped, this is useful for webbrowsers where you can't write spaces in urls for example and they get represented as "%20", or hex 20, or char 32 in ascii.

What you want is to unescape this, the following post may help you