Misbehaving code

Question

The code
class Test
     static public void main(String[] args)
          try
               String[] command = {"text2pdf",  "file.txt", ">", "file.pdf"};
               Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command);
          catch(Exception e)
               e.printStackTrace();
}is misbehaving by not producing the expected file. However, the command
text2pdf file.txt > file.pdfdirectly on my command line produces the file. What issues reside here?

Answer 1

Jamwa wrote:
import java.io.*;
class Test
     static public void main(String[] args)
          try
               Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
               String contents = "";
               // create the text file
               String command = "text2pdf tables.txt";
               Process proc = rt.exec(command);
               InputStream stdin = proc.getInputStream();
               InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(stdin);
               BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);
               String line = null;
               while ( (line = br.readLine()) != null)
                    contents += br.readLine();
               File output = new File("file.pdf");
               FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(output);
               fos.write(contents.getBytes());
               fos.close();
          catch(Exception e)
               e.printStackTrace();
}is my review of the code.
Acrobat reader, however, complains that
'Adobe Reader could not open file.pdf because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged...'Thats because the String contents is just that. A String. You are writing the bytes of a String to a file with a PDF extension and trying to open it in Adobe.
Of course it is not going to work because the String bytes don't constitute a PDF file format.
That String contents is merely the console output for your text2pdf program.