Java Runtime Exec on Windows Fails with Unicode in Arguments

Question

I want to launch a browser and load a web page using Java's Runtime exec. The exact call looks like this:

String[] explorer = {"C:\\Program Files\\Internet Explorer\\IEXPLORE.EXE", 
    "-noframemerging", 
    "C:\\ ... path containing unicode chars ... \\Main.html"};
Runtime.getRuntime().exec(explorer);

In my case, the path contains "\u65E5\u672C\u8A9E", the characters 日本語.

Apparently it's a java bug: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4947220

My question is: is there a viable workaround that can be done solely using Java? It appears that it is possible to write a JNI library for this, but I'd like to avoid that if possible. I have tried URI-encoding the path as ascii and writing the commands to a batch file, without success.

Answer 1

These are the two solutions I considered, each of which are more or less workarounds:

1. Create a temp html redirect file which will redirect the browser to the proper page. Note that IE will expect unencoded unicode for local files, while other browsers may accept only uri-encoded file paths

2. Use the short filename for the windows file. It won't contain unicode characters.

Answer 2

I think you can use Apache Commons Exec library or ProcessBuilder to give a try;)

Answer 3

At the mentioned Java bug page you will find a workaround that is reported to work using ProcessBuilder and wrapping the parameters in environment variables. Here is the source code from Parag Thakur:

String[] cmd = new String[]{"yourcmd.exe", "Japanese CLI argument: \ufeff\u30cb\u30e5\u30fc\u30b9"};        
Map<String, String> newEnv = new HashMap<String, String>();
newEnv.putAll(System.getenv());
String[] i18n = new String[cmd.length + 2];
i18n[0] = "cmd";
i18n[1] = "/C";
i18n[2] = cmd[0];
for (int counter = 1; counter < cmd.length; counter++)
{
    String envName = "JENV_" + counter;
    i18n[counter + 2] = "%" + envName + "%";
    newEnv.put(envName, cmd[counter]);
}
cmd = i18n;

ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder(cmd);
Map<String, String> env = pb.environment();
env.putAll(newEnv);
final Process p = pb.start();