Newbie, Need Java clarification

[Dave Guenthner]

Hello. I am a Sys Admin and have been using VBScript and Perl for some time and now looking into Java. Can you initiate a system call to the OS from within java. For example, sometimes in perl I use the system command which allows me to use some Windows native commands which are better in certain instances, like net use etc. I want to be able to run a java program from my machine and access files on remote machines to parse, getdata, etc. Those remote machines are 98% Windows and have the JRE 1.3 installed. Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks in advance,
Dave

[Hari Gangadharan]

Use Runtime to do that. However it makes your code platform dependent.

Runtime currentRuntime = Runtime.getRuntime();
currentRuntime.exec(programName);

To make it a little more platform independent, best way is to look for the executable at the path(s) you expect - if not found ask the user to locate the executable.
Hope this helps.