How to run Java program in command prompt

Question

I created a Java project to call a Web service. It has one Main java file and another class file. I have used some jar files for HTTP client.
In Eclipse it runs fine. I need to run the Java program in command prompt by passing some arguments.
In command prompt I went to src folder containing main java and sub class java file and gave the following command

javac mainjava.java    

I'm getting following error

mainjava.java:14: cannot find symbol
symbol : class SubClass

here SubClass is my another java class file used to call the web service.

How to run the program by passing arguments?

Answer 1

javac is the Java compiler. java is the JVM and what you use to execute a Java program. You do not execute .java files, they are just source files. Presumably there is .jar somewhere (or a directory containing .class files) that is the product of building it in Eclipse:

java/src/com/mypackage/Main.java
java/classes/com/mypackage/Main.class
java/lib/mypackage.jar

From directory java execute:

java -cp lib/mypackage.jar Main arg1 arg2

Answer 2

A very general command prompt how to for java is

javac mainjava.java
java mainjava

You'll very often see people doing

javac *.java
java mainjava

As for the subclass problem that's probably occurring because a path is missing from your class path, the -c flag I believe is used to set that.

Answer 3

You can use javac *.java command to compile all you java sources. Also you should learn a little about classpath because it seems that you should set appropriate classpath for succesful compilation (because your IDE use some libraries for building WebService clients). Also I can recommend you to check wich command your IDE use to build your project.