How to use a class from a parent directory in Java?

Question

For example, I have a class called Foo inside Foo.java which will use a class called Bar inside ../Bar.java. Is there any

Answer 1

Assuming these are both your classes and belong to the same module, you should be using packages and both classes should exist in the same package hierarchy. Then it would work automatically.

Packages would be something like com.company.application.module.Bar and com.company.application.module.subcomponent.Foo, for example. See more discussion on correct package naming:

• Oracle.com: naming packages
• wikipedia: package naming conventions

You can also do javac -sourcepath path/to/src/solution/java;path/to/src/test/java to point to several locations explicitly (note that -classpath will also work, see this discussion about the differences).

If we're talking about separate components that don't exist in the same module, you'd just use classpath to make the code aware of both (or preferrably some dependency mechanism like Maven that works out the stuff under the hood).