Can an executable .jar file be called without having to use its full path?

Question

I have a .jar file that I would like to be able to call without having to use a full file path to its location.

For example, if the .jar file is located at: /some/path/to/thearchive.jar

I'd like to be able to run it with:

java -jar thearchive.jar

instead of:

java -jar /some/path/to/thearchive.jar

when I'm elsewhere in the directory tree. In my specific case, I'm running a Mac with OS X 10.5.7 installed. Java version "1.5.0_16". I tried adding "/some/path/to" to PATH, JAVA_HOME and CLASSPATH, but that didn't work.

So, how do I setup to run a .jar from the command line without having to use its full path?

UPDATE: Another item to deal with would be arguments. For example:

java -jar /some/path/to/thearchive.jar arg1 arg2

This can have an effect on the way the question is dealt with as mentioned in the answers below.

Answer 1

You can add a variable to hold the directory:

export JARDIR=/some/path/to
java -jar $JARDIR/thearchive.jar

I'm not sure you can do it from environment variables implicitly.

Answer 2

No you can't.

Running a jar with -jar does not involve any kind of classpath mechanism since the jar file is the classpath.

Alternatively use a shell alias to launch the jar or a small script file.