How To Executing Or Run Program In JAVA?

Java sourcecode is always stored in files with the extension .java. Once you have created the sourcecode for a program and saved it in a .java file, you need to process the source using a Java compiler. Using the compiler that comes with the JDK, you would make the directory that contains your Java source file the current directory, and then enter the following command:

javac -source 1.4 MyProgram.java
Here, javac is the name of the Java compiler, and MyProgram.java is the name of the program source file. This command assumes that the current directory contains your source file. If it doesn't the compiler won't be able to find your source file. The -source command line option with the value 1.4 here tells the compiler that you want the code compiled with the SDK 1.4 language facilities. This causes the compiler to support a facility called assertions, and we will see what these are later on. If you leave this option out, the compiler will compile the code with SDK 1.3 capabilities so if the code uses assertions, these will be flagged as errors.

If you need to override an existing definition of the CLASSPATH environment variable – perhaps because it has been set by a Java development system you have installed, the command would be:

javac -source 1.4 -classpath . MyProgram.java
The value of CLASSPATH follows the -classpath specification and is just a period. This defines just the path to the current directory, whatever that happens to be. This means that the compiler will look for your source file or files in the current directory. If you forget to include the period, the compiler will not be able to find your source files in the current directory. If you include the -classpath . command line option in any event, it will do no harm.

Note that you should avoid storing your source files within the directory structure that was created for the SDK, as this can cause problems. Set up a separate directory of your own to hold the sourcecode for a program and keep the code for each program in its own directory.

Assuming your program contains no errors, the compiler generates a byte code program that is the equivalent of your source code. The compiler stores the byte code program in a file with the same name as the source file, but with the extension .class. Java executable modules are always stored in a file with the extension .class. By default, the .class file will be stored in the same directory as the source file.

The command line options we have introduced here are by no means all the options you have available for the compiler. You will be able to compile all of the examples in the book just knowing about the options we have discussed. There is a comprehensive description of all the options within the documentation for the SDK. You can also specify the -help command line option to get a summary of the standard options you can use.

If you are using some other product to develop your Java programs, you will probably be using a much more user-friendly, graphical interface for compiling your programs that won't involve entering commands such as that shown above. The file name extensions for your source file and the object file that results from it will be just the same however.

Executing a Java Application
To execute the byte code program in the .class file with the Java interpreter in the SDK, you make the directory containing the .class file current, and enter the command:

java -enableassertions MyProgram
Note that we use MyProgram to identify the program, NOT MyProgram.class. It is a common beginner's mistake to use the latter by analogy with the compile operation. If you put a .class file extension on MyProgram, your program won't execute and you will get an error message:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: MyProgram/class
While the compiler expects to find the name of your source file, the java interpreter expects the name of a class, which is MyProgram in this case, not the name of a file. The MyProgram.class file contains the MyProgram class. We will explain what a class is shortly.

The enableassertions option is necessary for SDK1.4 programs that use assertions, but since we will be using assertions once we have learned about them it's a good idea to get into the habit of always using this option. You can abbreviate the -enableassertions option to -ea if you wish.

If you want to override an existing CLASSPATH definition, the option is the same as with the compiler. You can also abbreviate -classpath to -cp with the Java interpreter, but strangely, this abbreviation does not apply to the compiler. Here's how the command would look:

java -ea -cp . MyProgram