Question

I am writing a small Java Application and I am having problems with a filepath.

I want to execute a batch file with

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c start c:\program files\folder\file.bat");

But now Java cries because of the whitespace in the filepath.

How can I escape it?

EDIT:

Ok, thank you for the answers guys.
But I just ran into a new problem:

If I start the .bat this way it just opens a cmd window and nothing happens. But if I move the .bat into c:/folder/ without spaces it works…the .bat itself is fine too.

Answer 1

You can avoid any problems like this by using the Runtime#exec that takes a String[]:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[] {"cmd", "/c", "start", "c:\\program files\\folder\\file.bat"});

That way you don’t have to worry about quoting the file names. However, you still have to worry about quoting \ in the file names.