How to Fix Error: The System Cannot Find the File Specified in Java

Sheeraz Gul Feb 02, 2024

Java Java Error

How to Fix Error: The System Cannot Find the File Specified in Java

This tutorial demonstrates solving the The system cannot find the file specified error in Java.

Fix the `The system cannot find the file specified` Error in Java

The Java error The system cannot find the file specified occurs when a file we are loading doesn’t occur in the directory or the file name is incorrect. It is also an exception from the Java IO package, which is thrown when the system cannot find a file with the given name.

Let’s try an example that will throw this same error:

package delftstack;

import java.io.*;

public class Example {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
      File NewFile = new File("NewDelftstack.txt");
      System.out.println(NewFile.getCanonicalPath());
      FileInputStream File_Input_Stream = new FileInputStream(NewFile);

      DataInputStream Data_Input_Stream = new DataInputStream(File_Input_Stream);
      BufferedReader Buffered_Reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(Data_Input_Stream));
      String line;

      while ((line = Buffered_Reader.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(line);
      }
      Data_Input_Stream.close();
    } catch (Exception e) {
      System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
    }
  }
}

The file NewDelftstack.txt is not in the directory, so the above code will throw the error. See output:

C:\Users\Sheeraz\eclipse-workspace\Demos\NewDelftstack.txt
Error: NewDelftstack.txt (The system cannot find the file specified)

To solve this issue, ensure you have entered the correct file name and path. We can also check the list of files in Java which will help us if we have entered the right name and path.

See example:

package delftstack;

import java.io.*;

public class Example {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
      File file = new File(".");
      for (String fileNames : file.list()) System.out.println(fileNames);
      File NewFile = new File("NewDelftstack.txt");
      System.out.println(NewFile.getCanonicalPath());
      FileInputStream File_Input_Stream = new FileInputStream(NewFile);

      DataInputStream Data_Input_Stream = new DataInputStream(File_Input_Stream);
      BufferedReader Buffered_Reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(Data_Input_Stream));
      String line;

      while ((line = Buffered_Reader.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(line);
      }
      Data_Input_Stream.close();
    } catch (Exception e) {
      System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
    }
  }
}

The code above will show a list of files in the directory, and we can look for our file and then correct the file name and path in our code. See output:

.classpath
.project
bin
Delftstack.png
delftstack.txt
delftstack.xml
delftstack.zip
src
C:\Users\Sheeraz\eclipse-workspace\Demos\NewDelftstack.txt
Error: NewDelftstack.txt (The system cannot find the file specified)

There is no file named NewDelftstack.txt in the directory. We can create a file with this name or change the file name in the code.

See example:

package delftstack;

import java.io.*;

public class Example {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
      File NewFile = new File("Delftstack.txt");
      System.out.println(NewFile.getCanonicalPath());
      FileInputStream File_Input_Stream = new FileInputStream(NewFile);

      DataInputStream Data_Input_Stream = new DataInputStream(File_Input_Stream);
      BufferedReader Buffered_Reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(Data_Input_Stream));
      String line;

      while ((line = Buffered_Reader.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(line);
      }
      Data_Input_Stream.close();
    } catch (Exception e) {
      System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
    }
  }
}

The code will work properly as the directory contains the file Delftstack.txt. See output:

C:\Users\Sheeraz\eclipse-workspace\Demos\delftstack.txt
Hello, This is a new text file from delftstack.com after overwriting the previous file.

Author: Sheeraz Gul

Sheeraz is a Doctorate fellow in Computer Science at Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xian, China. He has 7 years of Software Development experience in AI, Web, Database, and Desktop technologies. He writes tutorials in Java, PHP, Python, GoLang, R, etc., to help beginners learn the field of Computer Science.

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Fix the The system cannot find the file specified Error in Java

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Fix the `The system cannot find the file specified` Error in Java