Reading files with changing names

[runnerpaul]

every few hours my AS400 generates a text fille with the following naming convention:

"IR + 6 digit number which incriments by one each time a file is generated + _ + The start date and time for the file +_to_ + end date and time for the file + .txt". For example IR000002_20070528141515_to_20070528170003.txt is the name of the second file generated which started at 14:15:15 on 28/05/2007 and ended at 17:00:03 on 28/05/2007.

I want my Java program to read each file generated. I know how to do this when the file generaed is the same each time but havnt a clue now that each file has a different name. Can anybody help?

[nspils]

I interpret your question as containing the supposition that you are processing your files programmatically, rather than through user action on a JFileChooser.

You can use the list() method of File with a class which implements the FileFilter interface whose accept() method filters for the file names which meet your criterion, adding each filtered file name into a vector(or Set?) of strings. Then process your files by iterating through the vector of file names. An appropriate filter might be s.startsWith("IR").

[runnerpaul]

Yes. I intend for my program to run automatically. Each time it does it will find the latest text file that has been generated and convert it to XML.