ProcessBuilder environment variable in java

Question

I'm trying to add a environment variable for a ProcessBuilder object but then when I call on that new variable in the ProcessBuilder I get an error. this is how I build the Process

public class OTU
{
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
    {
        ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder();
        Map<String, String> env = pb.environment();
        //set environment variable u
        env.put("u", "util/");

        pb.command("echo $u");
        Process p = pb.start();
        String output = loadStream(p.getInputStream());
        String error  = loadStream(p.getErrorStream());
        int rc = p.waitFor();
        System.out.println("Process ended with rc=" + rc);
        System.out.println("\nStandard Output:\n");
        System.out.println(output);
        System.out.println("\nStandard Error:\n");
        System.out.println(error);
    }

    private static String loadStream(InputStream s) throws Exception
    {
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(s));
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        String line;
        while((line=br.readLine()) != null)
            sb.append(line).append("\n");
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

I get the error

Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "$u": java.io.IOException: error=2, No such file or directory
    at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:475)
    at ca.utoronto.siseq_1_2.OTU.main(OTU.java:22)
Caused by: java.io.IOException: java.io.IOException: error=2, No such file or directory
    at java.lang.UNIXProcess.<init>(UNIXProcess.java:164)
    at java.lang.ProcessImpl.start(ProcessImpl.java:81)
    at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:468)
    ... 1 more

I dont understand why I am getting the error if I just set the variable for this Process. Please help me how to set the env variable so I can use it in the ProcessBuilder.

Answer 1

Alfredo O's example gives you the right idea. You need to tell the ProcessBuilder what program to use to execute your command. In this case bash with the "-c" switch, which tells bash to interpret what comes next (i.e. "echo $u") as a command.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Map;

public class OTU {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("/bin/bash", "-c", "echo $u");
        Map<String, String> env = pb.environment();
        // set environment variable u
        env.put("u", "util/");

        Process p = pb.start();
        String output = loadStream(p.getInputStream());
        String error = loadStream(p.getErrorStream());
        int rc = p.waitFor();
        System.out.println("Process ended with rc=" + rc);
        System.out.println("\nStandard Output:\n");
        System.out.println(output);
        System.out.println("\nStandard Error:\n");
        System.out.println(error);
    }

    private static String loadStream(InputStream s) throws Exception {
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(s));
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        String line;
        while ((line = br.readLine()) != null)
            sb.append(line).append("\n");
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

This produces the following output:

Process ended with rc=0

Standard Output:

util/


Standard Error: