what is a “Valid System process” for mac and windows. (java ProcessBuilder)

Question

I am trying to work out the semantics of using Java ProcessBuilder to call operating system processes and read this line out of the javadocs for the start command :

"This method checks that the command is a valid operating system command. Which commands are valid is system-dependent, but at the very least the command must be a non-empty list of non-null strings."

Tell me, What is considered a valid process for Mac and for Windows? Is it anything that can be found on the PATH variable?

Answer 1

Is it anything that can be found on the PATH variable?

Yes it is; although you can also specify the full path of the command if you like (such as "/bin/ls" ). Another test if of course to check if the file in question is a regular file and has execution permissions.

Note: this will launch a "real" process, it will not launch it via a command interpreter; as such don't attempt to use pipes, file globs, shell builtins etc: those are interpreted by sh / cmd .