Scanning multiple files and printing them alphabetically

Question

I'm reading multiple text files using Java and printing their directories and I wonder why the output is not alphabetically arranged?

Code Snippet (got it from the internet also)

File dir = new File("/home/dilapitan/Desktop/xml-parsing/files/");
File[] listOfFiles = dir.listFiles();
for (File path : listOfFiles) {
    System.out.println(path);
}

Output:

dilapitan@NT071855:~/Desktop/xml-parsing$ java Multiple 
/home/dilapitan/Desktop/xml-parsing/files/c.txt
/home/dilapitan/Desktop/xml-parsing/files/b.txt
/home/dilapitan/Desktop/xml-parsing/files/a.txt
dilapitan@NT071855:~/Desktop/xml-parsing$ 

Can I do it with the output being:

a.txt
b.txt
c.txt

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

To quote File#listDir 's documentation :

There is no guarantee that the name strings in the resulting array will appear in any specific order; they are not, in particular, guaranteed to appear in alphabetical order.

If you want to print them in a specific order, you'll have to do so yourself. Java 8 streams git you an elegant way of combining the extraction of the file's name from the patch and sorting them in a single statement:

Arrays.stream(listOfFiles)
      .map(File::getName)
      .sorted()
      .forEach(System.out::println);

Answer 2

Just another way to do it, but using the power of java8

List<Path> x = Files.list(Paths.get("C:\\myPath\\Tools"))
            .filter(p -> Files.exists(p))
            .map(s -> s.getFileName())
            .sorted()
            .collect(Collectors.toList());

x.forEach(System.out::println);

or even better

List<Path> x = Files.list(Paths.get("C:\\Users\\myPath\\Tools"))
                .filter(Files::exists)
                .map(Path::getFileName)
                .sorted()
                .collect(Collectors.toList());

x.forEach(System.out::println);

Answer 3

Thank you to those who answered. I thought of a very simple solution:

File dir = new File("/home/dilapitan/Desktop/xml-parsing/files/");
File[] listOfFiles = dir.listFiles();
Arrays.sort(listOfFiles);

for (File path : listOfFiles) {
    System.out.println(path);
}

hahahaha my apologies everyone.