java on windows: read properties from file and pass them to java command

Question

In a former version of our application, we used the Eclipse launcher on Windows for startup. We hand the launcher an .ini file with java properties via the --launcher.ini property.

Now, we cannot use the launcher anymore and start the application from a .bat file using a java -jar <file> command. Therefore, the properties in the .ini file have to be added to this java command individually.

My idea is to have the .bat script read the properties from the .ini file and store them in a variable as list. The content of this variable is then used as part of the java command. How to do that in a robust way?

Answer 1

If you start it via a *.bat script I would first check if the file exists using:

if not exist myfile.ini (
   # print some error
)

and if it exist I would iterate parse each line by:

FOR /F %i IN (myfile.ini) DO @echo %i

After that I would fill an array with the values and pass it to the java invocation.