Using Java ProcessBuilder to Execute a Piped Command

Question

I'm trying to use Java's ProcessBuilder class to execute a command that has a pipe in it. For example:

ls -l | grep foo 

However, I get an error:

ls: |: no such file or directory 

Followed by:

ls: grep: no such file or directory 

Even though that command works perfectly from the command line, I can not get ProcessBuilder to execute a command that redirects its output to another.

Is there any way to accomplish this?

Answer 1

This should work:

ProcessBuilder b = new ProcessBuilder("/bin/sh", "-c", "ls -l| grep foo"); 

To execute a pipeline, you have to invoke a shell, and then run your commands inside that shell.