Compiling Hello.java - My First Java Program

Java Tools Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - Version 6.10, by Dr. Herong Yang

Java Tools Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Compiling Hello.java - My First Java Program

This section provides a tutorial example on how to compile a Java program using the 'javac' tool without any options.

To test the compiler, I wrote my first Java program with a text editor:

class Hello {
   public static void main(String[] a) {
      System.out.println("Hello world!"); 	
   }
}

Then I saved this program with the file Hello.java in a working directory C:\herong

Here is what I did in a command window to compile Hello.java with the 'javac' Java compiler tool. The output of the compilation is a Java class file called Hello.class:

C:\>cd \herong

C:\herong>javac Hello.java

C:\herong>dir Hello.*
   416 Hello.class
   116 Hello.java

So the simplest way to use the 'javac' Java compiler is to:

Open a command line window.
Change the current directory to the directory where the Java program is stored.
Run the Java compiler tool with "javac" command, or with the full path name \progra~1\java\jdk*\bin\javac.exe.
The compilation output file is a class file, stored in the current directory.

Last update: 2018.

Table of Contents

About This Book

Java Tools Terminology

Java Tools Included in JDK

►javac - The Java Program Compiler

javac - Java Compilation Command and Options

►Compiling Hello.java - My First Java Program

"javac -classpath" - Specifying Class Path

"javac -verbose" - Printing Compilation Details

"javac -sourcepath" - Specifying Source Path

"javac -d" - Specifying Output Directory