I have this folder structure:
- home
- org
- test
+ Foo.java
+ Foo.class
And the code in Foo.java is a simple hello world application:
//Note the usage of the package statement here.
package org.test;
public class Foo {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello world");
}
}
Then, in command line, in order to execute Foo.class, I should provide the complete name of the class (I'm in "/home" folder in cmd):
$ java -cp "org/test;." Foo
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Foo (wrong name: org/test/Foo)
$ java -cp "org/test;." org.test.Foo
Hello world
Now, I edit the class above and remove the package sentence:
//no package specified
public class Foo {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello world");
}
}
After recompiling the class and executing the same command lines:
$ java -cp "org/test;." Foo
Hello world
$ java -cp "org/test;." org.test.Foo
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/test/Foo (wrong name: Foo)
TL;DR
Make sure to always specify the full name of the class. Check if your class belongs to a package. Specifying the path of the class to execute is the same as writing the full name of the class, java program will replace / by ..