Gary Benson writes: > Hi all, > > I just noticed that File.canWrite() actually writes things in order to > check whether they are writable. This seems really wrong to me: just > checking something should not modify the filesystem! Does anyone mind > if I replace this? I agree with you. We should just use access("file", W_OK). The gcj source I'm looking at has public boolean canWrite() { checkWrite(); return _access (WRITE); } which is correct, but the Classpath native code I'm looking at uses /* The lazy man's way out. We actually do open the file for writing briefly to verify it can be done */ TARGET_NATIVE_FILE_OPEN_READWRITE (filename, fd, result); (*env)->ReleaseStringUTFChars (env, name, filename); if (result != TARGET_NATIVE_OK) { return (0); } TARGET_NATIVE_FILE_CLOSE (fd, result); I can't see any code that actually writes anything. Andrew.