On Sun, May 20, 2001 at 04:13:31PM -0500, Adam Heath wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Joe Emenaker wrote:
> > [...]
> > Well, each JVM on the system could have a script that builds the classpath
> > that it needs. That would be the first thing in the actual classpath passed
> > to the JVM. Next, you tack on the existing $CLASSPATH contents. Lastly, you
> > add the auto-generated stuff in ./lib, ./classes, $HOME/lib, $HOME/classes,
> > /usr/share/java/lib, and /usr/share/java/classes.
>
> $CLASSPATH should ALWAYS be first, in any auto-generated setup. How else
> would I be able to override something in a system directory?
The situation is the same as with MANPATH etc., i.e. the value of
CLASSPATH says where system classes go, using an empty path component.
E.g.:
CLASSPATH Equivalent to
:/foo:/bar ${system}:/foo:/bar
/foo:/bar: /foo:/bar:${system}
/foo::/bar /foo:${system}:/bar
This means that one can append or prepend to CLASSPATH, and the right
thing happens if CLASSPATH is unset.
(jdk before 1.2 didn't do this at all; from memory, jdk 1.2 does some but
not all of the three cases given above.)
pjm.
