Capture symbol "*" as an argument in a java program

Question

I am trying to write a simple java calculator program capable of addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division.

Within Eclipse, it works perfectly. But when I try to run it on Ubuntu Terminal, the symbol "*" is not recognized as an argument.

For example, when I type: java Calculate 7 * 8, the program does not read in the input as three pieces of arguments.

I am curious to know the cause of this problem and possibly a fix to this.

post your code and the command to run the program – Juned Ahsan Jan 20 '15 at 01:56 — Juned Ahsan, Jan 20 '15 at 01:56

Todd · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-20T02:02:10.837

5

When you do this on most command lines, the * is going to be expanded to the list of files in the directory. Try escaping it with quotes...

java Calculate 7 "*" 8

or

java Calculate 7 '*' 8

Edit: Thanks @Danny Daglas

edited Jan 20 '15 at 02:02

answered Jan 20 '15 at 01:56

Todd

3

"" are good quotes to use on Windows. '' are preferable for Ubuntu because `"*"` will still expand to "all files in the current working directory" in most Unix shells. `'*'` will not. – Danny Daglas Jan 20 '15 at 01:59
On Windows the original line is still available. Unlike UNIX, that is what is passed to the process. The `java.exe` wrapper then has that parsed into bad old `argv` and `argc`. However, there isn't a standard way to get at the original line. – Tom Hawtin - tackline Jan 20 '15 at 02:04

1 Answers1