Running a jar File from Java without Absolute Path

Question

I have a Calculator.jar file that I created with Netbeans.

I want to run that jar file using java code. After looking around stackoverflow and some documentation sites, I tried the following:

public static void main (String [] args){
    Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
    Process pr = rt.exec("java -jar C:\\pathToJar\\Calculator.jar);
    pr.waitFor();
}

The code runs fine, but my problem comes in with the path to the file. If I run the program without the absolute path, it runs and finishes, but I never see the calculator GUI pop up. When I run with the absolute path, the GUI pops up as expected.

I have the jar file in the same place as my source code. I thought doing that would allow me to just have to put Calculator.jar without the absolute path. That doesn't seem to work though.

Does anyone know how I could possibly store the jar file so I don't need to use the absolute path?

Edit: I also tried creating a separate package within the project called jarFiles and tried the path jarFiles\\Calculator.jar . That didn't work either. I think I'm misunderstanding something about the default path/what path cmd is using by default when I call the command. I'm not sure though.

Thanks for any advice in advance!

Answer 1

I believe the problem that you're having is that when you try

public static void main (String [] args){
    Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
    Process pr = rt.exec("java -jar \\Calculator.jar");
    pr.waitFor();
}

It looks into the root directory of the computer, also, there was a quotation mark forgotten on the end. The way you should access the current working directory is by simply eliminating the \\\\ , you might also want to surround the jar file path in quotation marks, just in case.

public static void main (String [] args){
    Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
    Process pr = rt.exec("java -jar \"Calculator.jar\"");
    pr.waitFor();
}