In earlier articles I've described how to execute system commands from Java applications. A long time ago I wrote my first article on this topic (How to execute system commands from Java), and more recently I wrote an updated version of that article titled "Executing system commands from Java using the ProcessBuilder and Process classes".

Given that introduction -- if you're interested in learning how to execute a Unix or Linux system pipeline (pipe) command from a Java application, you're in the right place.

I don't know if this is the "proper" way to handle having multiple keystrokes for one action, but until I find a better approach I thought I'd share this here.

If you need to get the position of the caret (cursor) in a JTextComponent (++JTextField, JTextArea JEditorPane or JTextPane), this turns out the be easy. Just use the getCaretPosition method of these classes, as shown here:

I'm currently writing a customized text editor in Java, and as part of that, I want to make it easy for the user to increase or decrease the font size in the text editing area (technically a JTextPane). I didn't expect this to be easy, but I've been pleasantly surprised that the following approach seems to work just fine:

I've been thinking about rewriting my old article on how to execute system processes from a Java application for a while now (Running system commands from Java applications), but it's a topic that quickly becomes complicated if you want to do it right, so I kept postponing it until I could give it some quality time in a real-world project.

I've finally had an opportunity to test this in a real-world Java application on a current project, so while I'm still not finished with this, I thought I'd share what I've learned so far.

<< Back to "Java exec with ProcessBuilder and Process, part 1"

A complete Java class that executes a system command

Now that you've seen that snippet of code, here's a complete Java class named ProcessBuilderExample that can execute a Unix/Linux system command:

<< Back to "Java exec with ProcessBuilder and Process, part 2"

Our ThreadedStreamHandler class

Based on an old-but-good article at JavaWorld, I'm developing the following ThreadedStreamHandler class. (It's still a work-in-progress, but as mentioned, commands that don't have to be run using sudo seem to work just fine right now.)

Continuing with the organization efforts again today, here is a collection of Java JButton tutorials and examples:

Here is a collection of links to our current JScrollPane tutorials and examples:

Still organizing things around here, and here is a list of JDialog tutorials and examples I have created: