You should use the returned Process to get the result.

Runtime#exec executes the command as a separate process and returns an object of type Process. You should call Process#waitFor so that your program waits until the new process finishes. Then, you can invoke Process.html#getOutputStream() on the returned Process object to inspect the output of the executed command.

An alternative way of creating a process is to use ProcessBuilder.

Process p = new ProcessBuilder("myCommand", "myArg").start();

With a ProcessBuilder, you list the arguments of the command as separate arguments.

See Difference between ProcessBuilder and Runtime.exec() and ProcessBuilder vs Runtime.exec() to learn more about the differences between Runtime#exec and ProcessBuilder#start.

There are two ways to do this:

1. Use fully qualified paths for execution (java ... /path/to/file.jar)
2. Use cd in your scripts.

The first is self-explanatory - use full paths to your files at execution time.

The second is needed at each execution line for different directories to call cd /the/dir/to/enter before executing things. While cd does NOT affect the shell outside of the script, it executes in the shell that's spawned for the script, and has the same effect as you running cd on the command line directly.

This should do it.

Copy#!/bin/bash

files="$@"

for i in $files;
do
    echo "Doing $i"
    java -jar somefile.jar <<< "$i"
done

Make sure you chmod u+x filename it first. Then call it like this:

Copy./filename firstfile secondfile thirdfile etc.

Other:

As sjsam pointed out, the use of <<< is a strictly bash thing. You are apparently using bash ("I'm rank new to bash..."), but if you weren't, this would not work.

You should really look at Process Builder. It is really built for this kind of thing.

ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("myshellScript.sh", "myArg1", "myArg2");
 Map<String, String> env = pb.environment();
 env.put("VAR1", "myValue");
 env.remove("OTHERVAR");
 env.put("VAR2", env.get("VAR1") + "suffix");
 pb.directory(new File("myDir"));
 Process p = pb.start();

Another way of doing would be to use Runtime.getRuntime(). Something like this

  public void executeScript() throws IOException, InterruptedException {
    Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("sh /root/Desktop/chat/script.sh");
    p.waitFor();

    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
    BufferedReader errorReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getErrorStream()));


    String line = "";
    while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(line);
    }

    line = "";
    while ((line = errorReader.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(line);
    }
}

You could use Runtime.exec(). Here is a very simple example:

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

class Foo {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        // Run command and wait till it's done
        Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("ping -n 3 www.google.de");
        p.waitFor();

        // Grab output and print to display
        BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));

        String line = "";
        while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
            System.out.println(line);
        }
    }
}

If the problem is that running the script doesn't show a terminal window, the solution depends on the window manager you're using. Gnome as well as KDE allow to edit properties of desktop shortcuts on a right-click and setting a option like "run in terminal" there.

Another way is to edit the desktop configuration file manually: you can find them in the Desktop subdirectory of your home dir. Just add a line with Terminal=true to the desktop configuration file that should run the server.

Possible duplicate of How to run Unix shell script from Java code? (don't have the reputation to put that in a comment, sorry).

In a nutshell - your line of code will work and the shell script will run by just doing that (tested on a SUSE Linux box).

However, if you want to do anything with the output or to know that it has completed, you'll have to add more code to check its state (check out the Process.waitFor() API) or to capture its output in Java (e.g. by capturing Standard out in a BufferedReader) - check Process.getInputStream() API.

java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "./path/to/bash": error=2, No such file or direct

It mean path of file was wrong. Please check file path again. What folder contains this file?