Java execute a command with a space in the pathname

Question

How can I execute a Java System (shell) command that has a space in the pathname?

I've tried putting quotes and a backslash (), But it does not work.

ln -s "dir1/dir2" "my\ dir/dir2"

Answer 1

By far the most reliable way is to use Runtime.exec(String[] cmdarray).

If you use Runtime.exec(String command), Java only splits the command on whitespace.

the command string is broken into tokens using a StringTokenizer created by the call new StringTokenizer(command) with no further modification of the character categories. The tokens produced by the tokenizer are then placed in the new string array cmdarray, in the same order.

See also g++: File not found

Or use ProcessBuilder something like this:

ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("ln", "-s", "dir1/dir2", "my dir/dir2");
Process p = pb.start();

Answer 2

Do you really need to execute it in a shell (e.g. do you need to shell expansion of things like ~ or *, etc)? If not, you could invoke ln directly:

Process p =
    Runtime.getRuntime()
    .exec(new String[]{"/bin/ln","-s","dir1/dir2", "my\\ dir/dir2"});

If you really need a shell, try this (this may need a little tweaking depending on how the shell processes the quotes):

Process p =
    Runtime.getRuntime()
    .exec(new String[]{"/bin/sh", "-c", "ln -s \"dir1/dir2\" \"my\\ dir/dir2\""});

Edit:

I was under the impression the second path has a literal backslash in it. If it's not supposed to remove the \\ from the string literals above.

Answer 3

None of these work on Lion. However, the following does work, and is backwards compatible for Tiger.

Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[]{"/bin/bash","-c","/path/to/file/space*init"});