Path.getParent() is null

Question

I just encountered behavior I do not understand:

Path path = Paths.get("somefile.txt");
System.out.println(path.getAbsolutePath());
System.out.println(path.getParent());

Well, to be honest, I was debugging some code and I evaluated this code on runtime and path was resolved as WindowsPath instance, therefore there was method getAbsolutePath available.

When I ran the code, parent was null but absolutePath printed the absolute path. So If the object knows absolute path and there is parent directory why does it return null?

Answer 1

you have to give the complete path /home/username/filename.txt instead somefile.txt

Answer 2

According to the javadoc, the Path#getParent() method :

Returns the parent path, or null if this path does not have a parent.

and

This method does not access the file system; the path or its parent may not exist

This means that "somefile.txt" doesn't have a parent path in the context of the root of your application.