Basically, I'm writing a hardware interface that will perform
user-defined operations in response to a set of trigger
inputs (it's for a haunted hause I'm putting together in
my garage).  The actions are defined by writing derived
classes based on a particular base class.  There's a
steering GUI that allows the user to select which action
to perform for each of the triggers from a pulldown list,
and I want that list to automatically load.

The straightforward way is to put all the action classes
in a directory and just look there when the program launches,
but I was hoping there might be a "cuter" way.  I guess not.

And yes, this is all overkill for what I'm trying to do,
but I was just having some fun.

Thanks for the response.

                -E

URL theDir = this.getClass().getResource("/");
File f = new File( url.getFile() );
f.listFiles( new ClassFilter() );
...

class ClassFilter extends FileFilter {

 boolean accept(File f) {
   return f.getName().toLowerCase().endsWith(".class");
 }
}

( quickly, of course.. ;-)

BTW, please keep your posts to c.l.j.help for the moment
EjP, it is not generally a good idea to x-post between
c.l.j.help and c.l.j.programmer.

** F'Ups set to c.l.j.help **

HTH

you don't want to load all the classes at startup.
you just need a class loader that "points" to the directory (classpath) that
hte files are in.
As the java app needs the classes , it will load them on the fly.

you need a small loader program, that does not directly reference the other
classes.
instigate a URL: type loader, as this allows the class files to be pulled
from any place, disk, internet, network, etc.

then launch an instance of your root application from this loader.
java will go thru and find all the needed classes.

steve