Question

Found this to be tricky; Having the following code:

String cmd = "find /home/folder/ -type f"; 
Runtime run = Runtime.getRuntime() ; 
Process pr = run.exec(cmd); 
pr.waitFor();

I’ll pr.getInputStream() and have the proper find result there, no problem. However, if I want to be a bit more specific and have my command as cmd = "find /home/folder/ -type f -name somefile*";, the input stream will be empty.

Now, I thought it would be something related to the string expansions done by the interactive shell (which wouldn’t be used in this case, I suppose). In this case the * would have no meaning, and find would be looking for files really named “*” (something like \*). So I’ve tried to have my command as sh -c "find /home/folder/ -type f -name somefile*". But it didn’t work either…

What am I missing?

thanks,

f.

Ps.: It is an AIX box, with IBM’s Java JVM.

Answer 1

I always escape the wildcard when using find:

cmd = "find /home/folder/ -type f -name somefile\\*";