Setting ksh enviroment variables from Java

[Adam J Smith]

I have an application that will run in ksh that needs to set environment variables for another process to run.

I have tried

Runtime runtime = Runtime.getRuntime();
runtime.exec("export VARIABLE=value");

I also tried to create a shell script that takes two args and sets them to environment. When I run

runtime.exec(". set_var.sh" + " " + val1 + " " + val2);    

I get

java.io.IOException: Cannot run program ".": error=13, Permission denied    

When I run

runtime.exec("ksh set_var.sh" + " " + val1 + " " + val2);    

nothing happens.

I know another possibility is to use ProcessBuilder but I can find an example.
[ December 19, 2008: Message edited by: Adam J Smith ]

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Each time you call exec(), you're starting a new process; any changes made to the environment variables in a process will affect only that one process and its own children, not any other process you start with exec().

There are several Runtime.exec() methods; several of them take a String[] argument called "envp", which lets you pass environment variables to the process you're launching.

[Adam J Smith]

I was hoping I wouldn't have to do something like that. I am doing some maintenance on an old, and very poorly designed swing gui. The easiest solution seemed to be to set environment variables for the parent. I guess that may not be possible. Thanks.