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

Answer 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.

Answer 2

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);

Answer 3

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);
...