Executing shell-script with parameters from java

Question

I have been googling for some time, and everyone seems to have a different solution, none of which appear to be working for me.

I have tried both ProcessBuilder and Runtime. Both calling the .sh file directly and feeding it to /bin/bash. With no luck.

Back to basics, my current code is as follows;

String cmd[] = { "~/path/to/shellscript.sh", "foo", "bar" };
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmd);

Which is giving a No such file or directory error, despite that manually running;

~/path/to/shellscript.sh foo bar

Works perfectly from bash.

I need to keep the ~ because this shellscript exists in slightly different forms for three different users.

ruakh · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-01 18:20:37Z

14

One option is to handle ~ yourself:

String homeDir = System.getenv("HOME");
String[] cmd = { homeDir + "/path/to/shellscript.sh", "foo", "bar" };
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmd);

Another is to let Bash handle it for you:

String[] cmd = { "bash", "-c", "~/path/to/shellscript.sh foo bar" };
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmd);

answered Nov 1, 2012 at 18:20

ruakh

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5 Comments

lynks Over a year ago

Ah, is the ~ likely to be causing the problems do you think? Does java not know how to pass such a path to the system call?

Yair Zaslavsky Over a year ago

Yes, most likely ~ is the reason. You can have the above suggestion if per user the script is in the same relative path in the home directory, or have the path configured per user , as I suggested.

ruakh Over a year ago

@lynks: Yes. Tilde-expansion is a feature of Bash — see §3.5.2 "Tilde Expansion" in the Bash Reference Manual — and not something that Java knows anything about. (And not anything that the system knows anything about, either.)

lynks Over a year ago

The second suggestion worked perfectly, thanks. I didn't even think to check for the ~

Ashish Panery Over a year ago

what if i want to run shell script with sudo user ?

Lorand Bendig · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-01 21:17:55Z

As already mentioned, tilde is a shell-specific expansion which should be handled manually by replacing it with the home directory of the current user (e.g with $HOME if defined).

Besides the solutions already given, you might also consider using commons-io and commons-exec from the Apache Commons project:

...
import org.apache.commons.exec.CommandLine;
import org.apache.commons.exec.DefaultExecutor;
import org.apache.commons.exec.Executor;
import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
...
CommandLine cmd = new CommandLine("path/to/shellscript.sh");
cmd.addArgument("foo");
cmd.addArgument("bar");

Executor exec = new DefaultExecutor();
exec.setWorkingDirectory(FileUtils.getUserDirectory());
exec.execute(cmd);
...

Yair Zaslavsky · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-01 18:19:23Z

1

In general, I would recommend that you use the ScriptEngine instead of System.getRuntime().exec
I think it will make things more easy for you.
Bare in mind you need for this JDK 6 and above.
In addition, regarding your specific problem - I really think that this issue should be configurable.
You can do the following:
A. Have in your .bash_rc or .bash_profile (for each user) define a path to the configuration
script using:
EXPORT MY_SCRIPT=

B. Read this value from java code, using
String sciprtPath = System.getenv("MY_SCRIPT") to get the value.
C. Run the script , the way you did in your code, with scriptPath variable, or using the scriptEngine.

answered Nov 1, 2012 at 18:19

Yair Zaslavsky

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