I would suggest you simply do not create unusable indexes. :-) Handle catch/throw/finally correctly and it should not present any problems.
In some use scenarios it's not that simple... Anyway, back to the original question: indexExists() just checks for the presence of the "segments" file, so it says nothing about the index consistency. The best way to make sure the index is valid is to open it, and catch an IOException.
To purposefuly break the index you can do several things:
* delete the "segments" file itself (this will trash the whole index)
* delete one of the segments from the index (should generate exception when opening)
* write a bunch of zeros in the middle of a segment file. This should result in an exception - but I'm not sure when; whether during open(), or during actual reading of affected data. You could then do the following: loop through all terms in the index (see IndexReader API), and for each term get its TermPositions. This will have to read the complete index. Looping through all documents, and reading each document, doesn't guarantee that - unstored fields are not loaded into documents.
-- Best regards, Andrzej Bialecki ___. ___ ___ ___ _ _ __________________________________ [__ || __|__/|__||\/| Information Retrieval, Semantic Web ___|||__|| \| || | Embedded Unix, System Integration http://www.sigram.com Contact: info at sigram dot com
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
