Calling script

I feel like this a pretty dumb ?, but I am trying to call a script in Linux. Code looks like this:
class callscript {
public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
String item = "sh -c ./mescript";
Process proc = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(item);
int rc = proc.waitFor();
}
}
mescript is just supposed to do an 'ls -al'
It compiles and runs but no output.
I have tried to replace the String with 'sh -c ls' No luck.
Any ideas.
Thanks,
Bill Norton

Well I don't know Unix much, but in windows you would start a .bat file using:
Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c start run.bat");

i know this is a little off-track, but could you point me to a link that explicitly describes how to make a batch file in Win98/NT ? i don't like having to do dig up my java files from the command line so that i can run them. thanx

Open notepad and type your commands, and save it with a .bat extension.
Or if you are at the DOS prompt just type
>edit whatever.bat
type your commands and save.
Make sure that they land in the directory that you will invoke them from (or in the path of course).

I am also interested in how this would work. I searched around and found a couple of clues.
If your command has spaces in it you want to do some thing like this:
String[] cmd = {"ls", "-l", ".profile"} ;
And also saw a couple of examples that looked like this.
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec( script ); InputStream input = p.getInputStream();
I still have not figured out how to put it all together.

[This message has been edited by christopher foran (edited November 20, 2001).]

This is most likely really ugly code (hopefully someone will jump in and clean it up) but it works.
By works I mean that I get the results of an "ls -l" command at the command line I run the java program from.
import java.io.* ; public class runfromcmdline { public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception { String[] cmd = {"ls", "-l"} ; String s = null ; Process proc = Runtime.getRuntime().exec( cmd); BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( proc.getInputStream())) ; while( (s = br.readLine()) != null) { System.out.println( s) ; } } }

[This message has been edited by christopher foran (edited November 21, 2001).]