how classpath works??

[aashini shah]

I don't understand how CLASSPATH works? and how JVM finds the path.

I have set environment variable CLASSPATH to c:\jdk1.4\bin . i also tried c:\jdk1.4\bin\
but still i need to use set path=c:\jdk1.4\bin on command prompt.

CLASSPATH doesn't work.

what should i do?

[Henry Wong]

Originally posted by aashini shah:
I don't understand how CLASSPATH works? and how JVM finds the path.

I have set environment variable CLASSPATH to c:\jdk1.4\bin . i also tried c:\jdk1.4\bin\
but still i need to use set path=c:\jdk1.4\bin on command prompt.

CLASSPATH doesn't work.

what should i do?

CLASSPATH and PATH environment variables serves two different purposes. The CLASSPATH is used to find the class files. There should be no class files in the jdk bin directory. The jdk bin directory should contain the executables, which you find with the PATH variable.

Henry

[marc weber]

Originally posted by aashini shah:
...what should i do?

First, you should update your system PATH variable to include c:\jdk1.4\bin so that you don't need to type this all the time. This is covered in step 4 of the JDK installation instructions (assuming Windows).

Second, you should probably remove the system CLASSPATH variable. As Henry pointed out, setting this to the JDK's bin directory does nothing, because you shouldn't have class files there. In fact, this preempts Java's default behavior of looking for classes in the current directory, so it's likely to cause you problems. For background on CLASSPATH, see Setting the class path.