下面是返回值为Optional的版本(因为你不能确定文件有扩展名)…还有健全检查…

import java.io.File;
import java.util.Optional;

public class GetFileExtensionTool {

    public static Optional<String> getFileExtension(File file) {
        if (file == null) {
            throw new NullPointerException("file argument was null");
        }
        if (!file.isFile()) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("getFileExtension(File file)"
                    + " called on File object that wasn't an actual file"
                    + " (perhaps a directory or device?). file had path: "
                    + file.getAbsolutePath());
        }
        String fileName = file.getName();
        int i = fileName.lastIndexOf('.');
        if (i > 0) {
            return Optional.of(fileName.substring(i + 1));
        } else {
            return Optional.empty();
        }
    }
}

如果在Android上，你可以使用这个:

String ext = android.webkit.MimeTypeMap.getFileExtensionFromUrl(file.getName());

Java有一个内置的方法来处理这个问题，在Java .nio.file. files类中，这可能适合你的需要:

File f = new File("/path/to/file/foo.txt");
String ext = Files.probeContentType(f.toPath());
if(ext.equalsIgnoreCase("txt")) do whatever;

注意，这个静态方法使用这里找到的规范来检索“内容类型”，而“内容类型”是可以变化的。

下面是一个正确处理.tar.gz的方法，即使是在目录名中有点的路径中:

private static final String getExtension(final String filename) {
  if (filename == null) return null;
  final String afterLastSlash = filename.substring(filename.lastIndexOf('/') + 1);
  final int afterLastBackslash = afterLastSlash.lastIndexOf('\\') + 1;
  final int dotIndex = afterLastSlash.indexOf('.', afterLastBackslash);
  return (dotIndex == -1) ? "" : afterLastSlash.substring(dotIndex + 1);
}

创建afterLastSlash是为了更快地查找afterLastBackslash，因为如果字符串中有一些斜杠，它就不必搜索整个字符串。

原始String中的char[]被重用，没有在那里添加垃圾，JVM可能会注意到afterLastSlash立即是垃圾，以便将其放在堆栈而不是堆上。

从文件名获取文件扩展名

/**
 * The extension separator character.
 */
private static final char EXTENSION_SEPARATOR = '.';

/**
 * The Unix separator character.
 */
private static final char UNIX_SEPARATOR = '/';

/**
 * The Windows separator character.
 */
private static final char WINDOWS_SEPARATOR = '\\';

/**
 * The system separator character.
 */
private static final char SYSTEM_SEPARATOR = File.separatorChar;

/**
 * Gets the extension of a filename.
 * <p>
 * This method returns the textual part of the filename after the last dot.
 * There must be no directory separator after the dot.
 * <pre>
 * foo.txt      --> "txt"
 * a/b/c.jpg    --> "jpg"
 * a/b.txt/c    --> ""
 * a/b/c        --> ""
 * </pre>
 * <p>
 * The output will be the same irrespective of the machine that the code is running on.
 *
 * @param filename the filename to retrieve the extension of.
 * @return the extension of the file or an empty string if none exists.
 */
public static String getExtension(String filename) {
    if (filename == null) {
        return null;
    }
    int index = indexOfExtension(filename);
    if (index == -1) {
        return "";
    } else {
        return filename.substring(index + 1);
    }
}

/**
 * Returns the index of the last extension separator character, which is a dot.
 * <p>
 * This method also checks that there is no directory separator after the last dot.
 * To do this it uses {@link #indexOfLastSeparator(String)} which will
 * handle a file in either Unix or Windows format.
 * <p>
 * The output will be the same irrespective of the machine that the code is running on.
 *
 * @param filename  the filename to find the last path separator in, null returns -1
 * @return the index of the last separator character, or -1 if there
 * is no such character
 */
public static int indexOfExtension(String filename) {
    if (filename == null) {
        return -1;
    }
    int extensionPos = filename.lastIndexOf(EXTENSION_SEPARATOR);
    int lastSeparator = indexOfLastSeparator(filename);
    return (lastSeparator > extensionPos ? -1 : extensionPos);
}

/**
 * Returns the index of the last directory separator character.
 * <p>
 * This method will handle a file in either Unix or Windows format.
 * The position of the last forward or backslash is returned.
 * <p>
 * The output will be the same irrespective of the machine that the code is running on.
 *
 * @param filename  the filename to find the last path separator in, null returns -1
 * @return the index of the last separator character, or -1 if there
 * is no such character
 */
public static int indexOfLastSeparator(String filename) {
    if (filename == null) {
        return -1;
    }
    int lastUnixPos = filename.lastIndexOf(UNIX_SEPARATOR);
    int lastWindowsPos = filename.lastIndexOf(WINDOWS_SEPARATOR);
    return Math.max(lastUnixPos, lastWindowsPos);
}

学分

复制自Apache FileNameUtils Class - http://grepcode.com/file/repo1.maven.org/maven2/commons-io/commons-io/1.3.2/org/apache/commons/io/FilenameUtils.java#FilenameUtils.getExtension%28java.lang.String%29

如果使用Guava库，可以求助于Files实用程序类。它有一个特定的方法getFileExtension()。例如:

String path = "c:/path/to/file/foo.txt";
String ext = Files.getFileExtension(path);
System.out.println(ext); //prints txt

另外，你也可以用类似的函数getNameWithoutExtension()获取文件名:

String filename = Files.getNameWithoutExtension(path);
System.out.println(filename); //prints foo