[ale] found a bug in an open source API: It 'Broke' under linux.

[Tim Watts]

Just noticed something odd in your fix:

	prefs.put(CACHE_NAME_KEY, cacheFile.getName());

getName() returns just the base file name and discards the path. So it
will ALWAYS equal "ExchangeRates.xml". Therefore, there's really no need
to use the prefs object at all. Simpler and simpler...

Also, adding a new preferences key introduces more change than is
necessary to fix the bug. Not necessarily a bad thing but it may produce
some push back by the project committers.


On Sat, 2011-02-12 at 14:53 -0500, Joshua wrote:
> I am working with an API for currency conversion from 
> http://www.thomasknierim.com/index.php?s=currencyconverter&Submit=Search 
> <http://www.thomasknierim.com/index.php?s=currencyconverter&Submit=Search>
> 
> It is all written is Java.
> 
> The initCacheFile()  method worked fine under windows, but it broke 
> under linux. 
> 
> The original code grabbed the path to the java temp directory and then 
> concatenated  a file name onto the end of it.   I do not know what it 
> produces under windows, but my suspicion is that windows is something 
> like </driveletter:\pathtotemp\/>  with the trailing '\' included.
> 
> Under linux the call to return the temp directory returns '/tmp' and 
> then the concatenating of '/filename/'  creates a file named 
> /tmp/filename/ instead of /tmp//filename/  so the application was trying 
> to write to / where it did not have permissions.  So I had to write a 
> fix.  Still not sure the fix is this best.
> 
> 
> Maybe someone can look at the code I wrote and let me know.
> 
> http://pastebin.com/vsC6vZRU
> 
> The old code is commented out.
> 
> Joshua Roberts
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