[udig-devel] Udig on windows XP

[Jody Garnett]

I found the following function in DataUtilities:
>     /**
>      * Takes a URL and converts it to a File. The attempts to deal with
>      * Windows UNC format specific problems, specifically files located
>      * on network shares and different drives.
>      *
>      * If the URL.getAuthority() returns null or is empty, then only the
>      * url's path property is used to construct the file. Otherwise, the
>      * authority is prefixed before the path.
>      *
>      * It is assumed that url.getProtocol returns "file".
>      *
>      * Authority is the drive or network share the file is located on.
>      * Such as "C:", "E:", "\\fooServer"
>      *
>      * @param url a URL object that uses protocol "file"
>      * @return a File that corresponds to the URL's location
>      */
>     public static File urlToFile (URL url) {
>         String auth = url.getAuthority();
>         String path = url.getPath();
>         File f = null;
>         if (auth != null && !auth.equals("")) {
>             f = new File("//"+auth+path);
>         } else {
>             f = new File(path);
>         }
>         return f;
>     }
This function has no test cases! If you can send me exact file names 
that are failing for you I will try and
reproduce the problem as a test case.

In related research Java 6 has a new deprecation in this area;
- file.toURL() deprecated
- file.toURI().toURL() is okay

Chances are hacks like the above are in *everyones* code; so they were 
unable to fix file.toURL(); and had to strictly define 
file.toURL().toURI() instead.
Jody