development (package and directories)

[Adolfo Eloy]

Hello all.

I'm confused about the relation between packages and directory structures.

considering the following directory structure:

/home/adolfo/myProject/source/com/wickedlysmart/MyClass.java
/home/adolfo/myProject/classes/com/wickedlysmart/MyClass.java

And the MyClass source code as follows:

package com.wickedlysmart;
public class MyClass {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println("I see dead threads");
  }
}

when I'm into the /home/adolfo/myProject and I run as follows:
java -cp classes com.wickedlysmart.MyClass

I get the output "I see dead threads" normally.

So, regarding this scenario, if I'm into the /home/adolfo/myProject/classes/com/wickedlysmart
Why I can't execute my class with the following commands:

java com.wickedlysmart.MyClass

or

java MyClass

Thanks.

[Stephan van Hulst]

Where should Java start looking for your class?

.../classes/com/wickedlysmart/com/wickedlysmart/MyClass.class ?

And what if you have a class named MyClass.java in the default package, located in .../myProject/classes ? If you run java MyClass, should it run MyClass in the current directory, or the one located in the default package?

[Javin Paul]

Hi Adolfo Eloy,

Java start looking for user defined classes from environment variable "CLASSPATH" until you specifiy -cp or -classpath option while running java , which overrides
default classpath and is a preferred way for setting classpath for individual application.

default value for CLASSPATH in java is current directory "."

so if your classpath is set to current directory "." and you give command "java com.wickedlysmart.MyClass" , it will look for MyClass in directory ./com/wickedlysmart/ and if it finds the class it will execute .

but if you give name only "MyClass" than it would be incorrect name for that class , so it won't run.

but it all depends upon what is value or CLASSPATH in your environment .