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java get file size efficiently

Asked 2008-09-22T18:21:40.423
172

While googling, I see that using java.io.File#length() can be slow. FileChannel has a size() method that is available as well.

Is there an efficient way in java to get the file size?

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The benchmark given by GHad measures lots of other stuff (such as reflection, instantiating objects, etc.) besides getting the length. If we try to get rid of these things then for one call I get the following times in microseconds:

   file sum___19.0, per Iteration___19.0
    raf sum___16.0, per Iteration___16.0
channel sum__273.0, per Iteration__273.0

For 100 runs and 10000 iterations I get:

   file sum__1767629.0, per Iteration__1.7676290000000001
    raf sum___881284.0, per Iteration__0.8812840000000001
channel sum___414286.0, per Iteration__0.414286

I did run the following modified code giving as an argument the name of a 100MB file.

import java.io.*;
import java.nio.channels.*;
import java.net.*;
import java.util.*;

public class FileSizeBench {

  private static File file;
  private static FileChannel channel;
  private static RandomAccessFile raf;

  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    int runs = 1;
    int iterations = 1;

    file = new File(args[0]);
    channel = new FileInputStream(args[0]).getChannel();
    raf = new RandomAccessFile(args[0], "r");

    HashMap<String, Double> times = new HashMap<String, Double>();
    times.put("file", 0.0);
    times.put("channel", 0.0);
    times.put("raf", 0.0);

    long start;
    for (int i = 0; i < runs; ++i) {
      long l = file.length();

      start = System.nanoTime();
      for (int j = 0; j < iterations; ++j)
        if (l != file.length()) throw new Exception();
      times.put("file", times.get("file") + System.nanoTime() - start);

      start = System.nanoTime();
      for (int j = 0; j < iterations; ++j)
        if (l != channel.size()) throw new Exception();
      times.put("channel", times.get("channel") + System.nanoTime() - start);

      start = System.nanoTime();
      for (int j = 0; j < iterations; ++j)
        if (l != raf.length()) throw new Exception();
      times.put("raf", t
answered 2008-09-23T06:18:54.503

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