How to run Unix shell script from Java code?

You should really look at Process Builder. It is really built for this kind of thing.

ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("myshellScript.sh", "myArg1", "myArg2");
 Map<String, String> env = pb.environment();
 env.put("VAR1", "myValue");
 env.remove("OTHERVAR");
 env.put("VAR2", env.get("VAR1") + "suffix");
 pb.directory(new File("myDir"));
 Process p = pb.start();

You can use Apache Commons exec library also.

Example :

package testShellScript;

import java.io.IOException;
import org.apache.commons.exec.CommandLine;
import org.apache.commons.exec.DefaultExecutor;
import org.apache.commons.exec.ExecuteException;

public class TestScript {
    int iExitValue;
    String sCommandString;

    public void runScript(String command){
        sCommandString = command;
        CommandLine oCmdLine = CommandLine.parse(sCommandString);
        DefaultExecutor oDefaultExecutor = new DefaultExecutor();
        oDefaultExecutor.setExitValue(0);
        try {
            iExitValue = oDefaultExecutor.execute(oCmdLine);
        } catch (ExecuteException e) {
            System.err.println("Execution failed.");
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            System.err.println("permission denied.");
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public static void main(String args[]){
        TestScript testScript = new TestScript();
        testScript.runScript("sh /root/Desktop/testScript.sh");
    }
}

For further reference, An example is given on Apache Doc also.


I would say that it is not in the spirit of Java to run a shell script from Java. Java is meant to be cross platform, and running a shell script would limit its use to just UNIX.

With that said, it's definitely possible to run a shell script from within Java. You'd use exactly the same syntax you listed (I haven't tried it myself, but try executing the shell script directly, and if that doesn't work, execute the shell itself, passing the script in as a command line parameter).