Java does’nt like C:\Programme on Vista

May 8, 2008

On my German Windows Vista I have a folder called C:\Programme which is basically the translation of C:\Program Files in the English version. But unlike in Windows XP, where the folder is really called this way, Vista does use a kind of just-in-time translation when accessing this folder through Windows Explorer. So it happens, that on another box I have two C:\Programme folders (see screenshot below).

When you look at the properties of both folders you can see that these are two different named folders in the files system:

And that’s the reason why I can’t access C:\Programme in my Java code on the one box, because in real this folder is called C:\Program Files. Well, what would a programmer’s life look like without these obstacles?

Posted in Software