How to use a wildcard in the classpath to add multiple jars?

java classpath wildcard
paulbullard picture paulbullard · Aug 6, 2009 · Viewed 110.8k times · Source

I have been using so many 3rd party libraries(jar files) that my CLASSPATH is completely messed up as i have to include the path for every single jar file that i use.

I've been wondering if there is a way to include all the jar files in a folder using wildcard(*) operator (like *.jar). But it seems to be not working. Is there any other way that can shorten the CLASSPATH that currently looks like an essay ;) on my PC?.

Answer

Itay Maman picture Itay Maman · Aug 6, 2009

From: http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/tools/windows/classpath.html

Class path entries can contain the basename wildcard character *, which is considered equivalent to specifying a list of all the files in the directory with the extension .jar or .JAR. For example, the class path entry foo/* specifies all JAR files in the directory named foo. A classpath entry consisting simply of * expands to a list of all the jar files in the current directory.

This should work in Java6, not sure about Java5

(If it seems it does not work as expected, try putting quotes. eg: "foo/*")

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