Make a File/Folder Hidden on Windows with Java

I need to make files and folders hidden on both Windows and Linux. I know that appending a '.' to the front of a file or folder will make it hidden on Linux. How do I make a file or folder hidden on Windows?

The functionality that you desire is a feature of NIO.2 in the upcoming Java 7.

Here's an article describing how will it be used for what you need: Managing Metadata (File and File Store Attributes). There's an example with DOS File Attributes:

Path file = ...;
try {
    DosFileAttributes attr = Attributes.readDosFileAttributes(file);
    System.out.println("isReadOnly is " + attr.isReadOnly());
    System.out.println("isHidden is " + attr.isHidden());
    System.out.println("isArchive is " + attr.isArchive());
    System.out.println("isSystem is " + attr.isSystem());
} catch (IOException x) {
    System.err.println("DOS file attributes not supported:" + x);
}

Setting attributes can be done using DosFileAttributeView

Considering these facts, I doubt that there's a standard and elegant way to accomplish that in Java 6 or Java 5.

For Java 6 and below,

You will need to use a native call, here is one way for windows

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("attrib +H myHiddenFile.java");

You should learn a bit about win32-api or Java Native.

Java 7 can hide a DOS file this way:

Path path = Paths.get("...");
Files.setAttribute(path, "dos:hidden", Boolean.TRUE, LinkOption.NOFOLLOW_LINKS);

Earlier Java versions don't have an API for this.

The above code will not throw an exception on non-DOS file systems. If the name of the file starts with a period, then it will be a hidden on UNIX file systems.

this is what I use:

void hide(File src) throws InterruptedException, IOException {
    // win32 command line variant
    Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("attrib +h " + src.getPath());
    p.waitFor(); // p.waitFor() important, so that the file really appears as hidden immediately after function exit.
}

on windows, using java nio, Files

Path path = Paths.get(..); //< input target path
Files.write(path, data_byte, StandardOpenOption.CREATE_NEW); //< if file not exist, create 
Files.setAttribute(path, "dos:hidden", Boolean.TRUE, LinkOption.NOFOLLOW_LINKS); //< set hidden attribute