Where does Java's ProcessBuilder look to execute commands?

Question

When I execute a command using ProcessBuilder, how does it know where to look for that command? Using this hack/trick I\'ve modified my PATH variable (verified

Answer 1

The documentation says

[...] a command, a list of strings which signifies the external program file to be invoked and its arguments, if any. Which string lists represent a valid operating system command is system-dependent. [...]

Which in essence mean that where it looks for programs to execute depends on the particular system and JVM you're running on.

I can't find a complete matrix of JVM / System behaviors, but supposedly it behaves similar to the popular shells of the system (bash for *nix and cmd for windows) i.e. it searches the directories in the PATH environment variable from left to right and executes the first executable file it finds.