i am trying to copy all files from a directory to another

i have
---------
try {
// Execute a command with an argument that contains a space
String[] commands = new String[3];
commands[0]="cp";
commands[1]="/student5/h4/03/pc/ab07/assignmentfolder/nha/s1/*";
commands[2]="test";

Process child = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(commands);
} catch (IOException e) {
System.err.print(e.getMessage());
}

but this does not seem to work. test is the targer directory
the command works in linux. but won't work when i execute it in java.

any idea?
thanks in advance.

What happens if you try just one string (i.e. 'exec ("cp from/*.* /to")')?

You are copying the contents of the other directory into this one. Why don't you include the absolute path instead? If it works, then maybe you're just executing your Java application from the wrong place, which makes the program unable to access the directory through a relative path..

If it fails, while not set an Error Stream so that you can know what's going on?

This is just a guess, but * globs are usually unescaped by the shell. You may in fact be trying to copy a single file of name * from s1/ to test/, rather than un-globbing the filenames of the individual files.
Try this:
This will explicitly execute commands[2], using a BASH shell as an interpreter.

cool
it works
thanks