Runtime.exec on argument containing multiple spaces

Always use Runtime.exec(String[]), not Runtime.exec(String) unless the command line is extremely simple.

A miracle, it works!

Don't ask me why, but when i, after quite a while of nerve-wrecking research in the internets, was close to give up and use a temporary batch file as a workaround, i forgot to add the /select, parameter to the command, and, who would have thought, the following works on my Win 7 32Bit System.

String param = "\"C:\\Users\\ME\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Temporary Internet Files\\\"";
try {
    String[]commands = new String[]{"explorer.exe", param};
    Process child = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(commands);
} catch (IOException e1) {
    System.out.println("...");
}

General Solution:

The solution of the bug-database mentioned by prunge in his post (https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug?bug_id=6511002) worked fine for me.

Reason:

Apparently the problem lies with the commenting of some characters done by java which it does before actually executing the command string. You have to do the commenting yourself by tokenizing your command string, to prevent the faulty java one to spring into action and mess everything up.

How to fix:

So, in my case i had to do the following (tokenizing my command string, so that no spaces are left inside the string):

String param[] = {
    "explorer.exe",
    "/select,C:\\Users\\ME\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Temporary",
    "Internet",
    "Files\\"};

try {
    Process child = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(param);
} catch (IOException e1) {
    System.out.println("...");
}

As you can see i basically started a new String wherever a space occured, so "Temporary Internet Files" became "Temporary","Internet","Files".

Use new File(pathName).canExecute() first to check whether it's executable or not

EDIT:

public static void runAll(String... cmd)
{
    for(String s : cmd)
    {
        try
        {
            Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmd);
        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

and then you can use it like: runAll("explorer.exe", "taskmgr.exe");

The characters ,-& and double spaces, all combined are a nightmare!

All the answers exposed here failed for "\\NAS\media\Music\Artistes\E\Earth, Wind & Fire\1992 - The eternal dance - Vol. 1 (1971-1975) (double space between 'Vol. 1' and '(1971').

I have no other choice than writing a temporary batch file:

   void openFolderOf( Album album ) {
      try {
         final String path = album._playList.getParent();
         final File batch = File.createTempFile( getClass().getSimpleName(), ".bat" );
         try( PrintStream ps = new PrintStream( batch )) {
            ps.println( "explorer.exe \"" + path + '"' );
         }
         Runtime.getRuntime().exec( batch.getAbsolutePath());
      }
      catch( final Throwable t ) {
         t.printStackTrace();
      }
   }

Note: on cmd.exe, the line explorer "\\NAS..." works well but not with Runtime.exec() nor ProcessBuilder.

Could be a Java bug. See: https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug?bug_id=6511002

Did a bit of debugging out of curiosity, I think things are becoming unstuck in java.lang.ProcessImpl (see the constructor). Noticed that when it got to actually calling the underlying Windows API the string had turned into

explorer.exe "/select,"c:\New Folder\test.txt""

So that might explain why, as for workarounds see the bug database link.

For your specific case of needing the reveal/select command, I get around the windows quote nightmare by using cmd /c start:

String[] cmd = {"cmd", "/c", "start explorer.exe /select," + path};

Where path is the absolute path from a File object.

A better way to do it would be using ProcessBuilder object:

 Process p;
 p = new ProcessBuilder("/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/MacOS/sublime_text", homeDir + _CURL_POST_PUT_CMDS).start();
 int exitValue = p.waitFor();
 if (exitValue != 0){
    System.out.println("Error to open " + homeDir + _CURL_POST_PUT_CMDS);
 }

Simple way to resolve this problem for files is java.awt.Desktop Since 1.6 Example:

   Desktop.getDesktop().open(new File(fullFileName));