java -cp “lib/*” versus java -cp “lib/*.jar”

Question

If the lib/ directory contains only .jar files, what's the difference between

java -cp "lib/*" ...

and

java -cp "lib/*.jar" ...

If I use the latter I ran into errors regarding main class and I don't understand why. lib/* also contains lib/. , but is this the crucial difference?

Answer 1

According to the documentation of java only a basename of * is supported and it only ever matches .jar files.

Nothing in the documentation suggests that "*.jar" is supported or that the directory itself is added to the classpath.