Why do you remove .class when executing on the JVM?

Question

Example: I have some source code, FooBar.java

javac FooBar.java

that gives me FooBar.class.

Why does the JVM command line API take FooBar instead of FooBar.class (working on UNIX FYI)?

dublicate, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8651140/why-compiler-needs-java-suffix-but-interpreter-doesnt-need-class-suffix http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8755746/why-javac-requires-java-extension-and-java-doesnt-require-class-extension — Ahmet Karakaya, Nov 25 '13 at 21:00

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 25 '13 at 20:56

5

That's just a convention! Classes are loaded using their fully qualified class name. The ClassLoader then knows how to map class names to file names (e.g. by appending '.class').

answered Nov 25 '13 at 20:56

isnot2bad

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score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 25 '13 at 20:58

Just because you have to tell the JVM the name of the class you want to run, not its actual filename. Another example, if your class was myPackage/FooBar.java you would compile to myPackage/FooBar.class, though you would put myPackage.FooBar as jvm argument.

Why do you remove .class when executing on the JVM?

2 Answers2