Thread: Help using this Jar File (newbie)

i have a simple .jar file i want to use but have no idea HOW to get this thing to run. it is based on this website (see below) It is a simple Sentence Segementer (splits paragraphs of text files into 1 sentence per line).

I am attaching the .jar as a .zip as well, im just not sure how java works. I have java installed and verified, i tried using several commands from CMD but nothing works for me...

I understand that I need a txt file but how to execute and what are the commands is my main problem. Do i need a 3rd party SW, do i need to create a GUI?

thanks you!!

here is the with insight as well file attached

.jar file are actually .zip files so there is no need to zip them up.

You can run this from the command line with

java -jar sptoolkit.jar

If java is set up correctly it will give you an error telling you the proper usage:

Command-line usage: cat input_text | Java -jar sptoollit.jar -f [1234]

If you are using linux this should be pretty straight forward. On windows the equiviliant for 'cat' is 'type'. You will also want to pipe the output to a new file so the command would be:

type input.txt | java -jar sptoolkit.jar -f 1 > output.txt

thanks Chris, that was perfect. Exactly what I needed to understand these files...

My next step is to try to automate this process a little more... Instead of using the command prompt to run this java script I was thinking maybe right clicking a .TXT file, then selecting a command that executes the java that uses the selected .TXT as the input and automatically creates the output .TXT in the same directory.

Is this too involved to accomplish? Whats your professional opinion ?

thanks again for your help!

Thats a more complicated problem. You will need to create a .bat file that:

• accepts a .txt file as an input parameter
• creates an appropriate name for the output
• executes the above command

You will then put this somewhere on the system environment's PATH. The idea is to condense the above command into something you can run anywhere from the command line with;

sptoolkit.bat inputfile.txt

At this stage you can look at adding this batch file to the right click context menu by editing the registry. There are some instructions on SuperUser

Quick question regarding running this command line...

what is the rule as far as referencing the file.
Do I need to change the dir in cmd to reflect the location where the file is located? or
Does the location need to be part of the command line?
does the file i use as the input need to be in the same folder as the java file?
do i need to add a full location reference to the input file in the cmd line?

having trouble understanding the specific rule for this..

You should be able to answer your own questions with simple experimentation. Write your .bat file and test it. There's no "rule," other than doing what works, and there are multiple ways to write code that "works".