Could not find or load main class

Question

I started using JDBC so I went to Classpath, changed it to classpath of OracleDriver and program compiled. There was classpath set earlier there which I did not bother to check.Now, the program can compile but I am not able to run it.This is the error message I am getting:

Could not find or load main class 'classname that I am trying to run'

Any idea what's wrong?

Answer 1

After you compile, there are generated .class files that get made from the .java files.

When you want to run, you need the generated .class files on the path, so find the directory where they live, and add that directory to the class path.

Note that if you define a class as

package com.corp.myproduct;

public class Sifter {
}

It will generate to a path of

<root>/com/corp/myproduct/Sifter.class

or on windows

<root>\com\corp\myproduct\Sifter.class

where root is the "top level directory" of the compiled output. You don't add <root>/com/corp/myproduct/ in such a case to the classpath, you just add <root> .