I have an app which has to read from a text file (using FileInputStream). The text file is in the directory structure relative to the class file (eg. "../textdir/text.txt"). When I run it normally (ie specifying the /bin folder containing the .class file in the cp) everything works fine. However, I somehow need to package everything into one jar and when I run the jar nothing works. The error is something like "FileNotFOund: MyJar.jar!/textdir/text.txt". I ran jar -tvf on the jarfile and the text file was indeed inside. I have read but not write access to the source code.
More than trying to solve my problem (I think there are plenty of workarounds), can someone explain to me how the whole thing work? How does the jar search for files? What if I want to read from current working directory of the command prompt instead of the directory of the .class in the jar file? Also, I recently had a similar problem with loading resources when I converted a non-jar project to a jar, how does that work?