How to make Runtime.exec call Linux exec?

Question

Howdy,
I am trying to use a combination of 'find' and 'rm' to delete all files with a certain extension in a directory and all of its subdirs.
Here's the command:
Process proc = runtime.exec("find " + dir + " -name '*.vcs' -exec rm -rf {} \\;");
It's failing, not sure why, the exitCode is 1 instead of 0. I'm not sure if it's because I have to escape the '\' character, or if it's because I am calling Linux's 'exec' function within a Java exec() call, or something else entirely.
The easiest thing to do would be to just use rm, but that doesn't seem to be an option. With rm it seems to be all or nothing -- If I try:
rm -rf *.vcs
it fails if it doesn't find a file with that extension in the start directory (even though I've specified -r). But if I enter:
rm -rf *
it nukes my directories AND files, something I don't want to happen. I realize this is a Linux thing, I'm just explaining it here as background, just in case.
Anyway, so is there a way to do this? Perhaps with another system call, without using Linux's exec()?
Many thanks
Bob

Answer 1

import java.io.*;
public class ExecutingALinuxCommand
    static class PipeInputStreamToOutputStream implements Runnable
        PipeInputStreamToOutputStream(InputStream is, OutputStream os)
            is_ = is;
            os_ = os;
        public void run()
            try
                byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
                for(int count = 0; (count = is_.read(buffer)) >= 0;)
                    os_.write(buffer, 0, count);
            catch (IOException e)
                e.printStackTrace();
        private final InputStream is_;
        private final OutputStream os_;
    public static void main(String[] args)
        try
            String dir = System.getProperty("user.home") + "/work/dev";
            String[] command = {"sh","-c", "find " + dir + " -name '*.java' -exec grep -l Runtime {} \\;"};
            final Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command);
            new Thread(new PipeInputStreamToOutputStream(process.getInputStream(), System.out)).start();
            new Thread(new PipeInputStreamToOutputStream(process.getErrorStream(), System.err)).start();
            int returnCode = process.waitFor();
            System.out.println("Return code = " + returnCode);
        catch (Exception e)
            e.printStackTrace();
}