Space in "Program Files" causing JNI_CreateJavaVM to fail

Question

JNI experts:
I'm launching a VM from a .exe (Win2000) written in C using MSVC and using JNI_CreateJavaVM. I'd like to specify the location of my installed jar file using the
-Djava.class.path=path as an optionString in an options element of JavaVMInitArgs.
All works wonderfully. Congratulations to all those who made JNI happen :)
So... there's one problem. When my jar file is installed in c:\Program Files\xyz\myfile.jar the JVM fails to find it. When installed in c:\xyz\myfile.jar the JVM finds it and all is well.
It looks like this: "-Djava.class.path=c:\Program Files\..."
So I'm rather convinced the space between Program and Files is causing the problem. I've tried many hacks and searched the web and newsgroups to a large degree... with no luck.
This is jdk1.3 and I've tried both JDK and JRE dlls:
c:\Program Files\JavaSoft\JRE\1.3.0_0\bin\hotspot\jvm.dll
and
c:\jdk1.3\bin\hotspot\jvm.dll
I've also tried classic instead of hotspot.
Any clues would be helpful. Or, can I get access to the JVM code (I know that much of the Java implementation is available in various locations). I'm sure after dissecting that I could find the problem.
Also, installing the .jar file in a directory without spaces in the name is unacceptable :(
Thanks much...
-Clint

Answer 1

Ok, I've found the problem. For reference:
1. Use the ext directories (jre/lib/ext). However, this won't work when using older JVMs. Which I'm attempting to provide backward compatibility.
OR
2. The java.class.path system property must contain entire path of a jar file, not just a directory containing the jar files of interest.
ALSO
3. An odd behavior. When the java.class.path system property contains an invalid path, the JVM seems to add the current working directory (the directory from where the JVM was initated) to the java.class.path property. For instance, I had:
-Djava.class.path=c:\test;c:\testBad;
where c:\testBad is not an actual directory. This will make the JVM look in the CWD to look for class files. Or so that is the behavior that I witnessed. Go figure...
-Clint