Make a File/Folder Hidden on Windows with Java

Question

Hi,

I need to make a file and/or folder hidden on both Windows and Linux. I know that appending a '.' to the front of a file/folder will make it hidden on Linux, but how do I do this on Windows?

Thanks

Answer 1

You will need to use a native call, here is one way for windows

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("attrib +H myHiddenFile.java");

You should learn a bit about win32-api or Java Native.

Answer 2

The functionality that you desire is a feature of NIO.2 in the upcoming Java 7.

Here's an article describing how will it be used for what you need: Managing Metadata (File and File Store Attributes). There's an example with DOS File Attributes:

Path file = ...;
try {
    DosFileAttributes attr = Attributes.readDosFileAttributes(file);
    System.out.println("isReadOnly is " + attr.isReadOnly());
    System.out.println("isHidden is " + attr.isHidden());
    System.out.println("isArchive is " + attr.isArchive());
    System.out.println("isSystem is " + attr.isSystem());
} catch (IOException x) {
    System.err.println("DOS file attributes not supported:" + x);
}

Setting attributes can be done using DosFileAttributeView

Considering these facts, I doubt that there's a standard and elegant way to accomplish that in Java 6 or Java 5.

Answer 3

this is what I use:

void hide(File src) throws InterruptedException, IOException {
    // win32 command line variant
    Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("attrib +h " + src.getPath());
    p.waitFor();
}

Answer 4

Java 7 can hide a DOS file this way:

Path path = ...;
Boolean hidden = path.getAttribute("dos:hidden", LinkOption.NOFOLLOW_LINKS);
if (hidden != null && !hidden) {
    path.setAttribute("dos:hidden", Boolean.TRUE, LinkOption.NOFOLLOW_LINKS);
}

Earlier Java-s can't.

The above code will not throw an exception on non-DOS file-systems. If the name of the file starts with a period, then it will also be hidden on UNIX file-systems.