javac "cannot find symbol" error with command line

Question

I have two classes Owning and OwningAccessor. The files are in the same directory.

public class Owning {
    String _name = "";
    public void printBanner()
    {
    }
    public void printOwning(double amount)
    {
        printBanner();

        //print details
        System.out.println("name:" + _name);
        System.out.println("amount:" + amount);
    }
}


public class OwningAccessor {
    public void access()
    {
        Owning o = new Owning();
        o.printOwning(500);
    }
}

When I tried to compile OwningAccessor with javac -cp . OwningAccessor.java, I got compilation error.

symbol  : class Owning
location: class smcho.OwningAccessor
        Owning o = new Owning();
        ^
OwningAccessor.java:6: cannot find symbol
symbol  : class Owning
location: class smcho.OwningAccessor
        Owning o = new Owning();
                   ^

What's wrong with this? The code compiles fine under eclipse IDE.

Answer 1

Make sure you compile both Owning.java and OwningAccessor.java, like so:

javac -cp . Owning.java OwningAccessor.java

Eclipse compiles all necessary files for you, which is why does work there.