Method usage- where's the problem?

Question

i'm just trying to run a simple case which defines a method and uses it. I have the following two files:
// file: Manual.java
import java.io.*;
public class Manual {
    /* METHOD DEFINITION-- ls:   
       functions like "ls" in unix/linux systems
       returns the contents of a directory */
    public String[] ls ( String location ) {
        File file =  new File( location );
        String [] files = file.list( );
     return files;
}and
// file: mergeManual.java
import java.io.*;
class mainls {
    public void main ( String[] args ) {
     String which_dir = new String( args[0] );
        Manual direc =  new Manual();
     String[] contents = direc.ls( which_dir );
        //show the contents:   
     //   for (int i=0; i< contents.length; i++)
     //  System.out.println( contents[i] );
}i get the following error when running:
$ java mergeManual temp
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: mergeManualwhere temp is just a sample directory. I checked the classpath variable (if that matters) and it is undefined. Can anyone see the problem?
thanks in advance!
-john

Answer 1

If you want to do java Foothen you must have public class Foo in Foo.java, and Foo must have public static void main(String[] args)Your class is not public. It needs to be public and the classname needs to match the filename.