No Checking

The constructor does not throw IOExceptions. No checking is done of the path name. Here is the example program, slighlty improved:

import java.io.*;
class TestExist
{

  public static void main ( String[] args ) 
  {
    String pathName;
    
    if ( args.length == 1 ) 
      pathName = args[0];
    else
      pathName = "";

    File   test = new File( pathName );

    if ( test.exists() )
      System.out.println( "The file " + pathName + " exists." );
    else
      System.out.println( "The file " + pathName + " Does Not exist." );
  }

}

Try running it with a variety of arguments on the command line, both files and directories. Here are some examples:

C:/cai/cs151/Notes/chap87/programs>java  TestExist TestExist.java
The file TestExist.java exists.

C:/cai/cs151/Notes/chap87/programs>java  TestExist ../programs/TestExist.java
The file ../programs/TestExist.java exists.

C:/cai/cs151/Notes/chap87/programs>java  TestExist ../programs
The file ../programs exists.

C:/cai/cs151/Notes/chap87/programs>java  TestExist C:/cai/cs151
The file C:/cai/cs151 exists.

C:/cai/cs151/Notes/chap87/programs>java  TestExist C:/glarch.txt
The file C:/glarch.txt Does Not exist.

Some of these arguments are relative path names, others are absolute pathnames. Some are directory names.