jar vs directory class

[nikki lorenzo]

Question: If i have a class, com.sample.A.class located in WEB-INF/lib/B.jar and a similar class in com/sample/ which gets picked up by the class loader?

Will appreciate ur help on this. Thanks.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

You mean WEB-INF/classes/com/sample/A.class? The Servlet spec says that the "classes" directory will be searched before the "lib" directory.

[nikki lorenzo]

Right. Thanks Ernest. Almost forgot that one.

In relation to that, suppose i have 2 jars in WEB-INF/lib. A.jar containing MyClass.class and B.jar containing containing A.jar/MyClass.class. Which version gets loaded this time?

[Jesper de Jong]

I haven't looked for you, but if there's an answer to your question, you'd most likely find it in the servlet specification just like the answer to your previous question.

I doubt that the order in which JAR files in the WEB-INF/lib directory are included, is well-defined. Is this an exam question or are you actually writing a web application in which this is important? It's not a good idea to make your webapp dependent on this...