title: Accessing classes in an external Jar
body: <p>I am having problems having my Java programs see classes that are packaged in an external jar.   I am running under Windows 7.    I have the classes embedded in a jar called ParserUtilities.jar.   I established the path with a CLASSPATH variable using the System utility and the Environment tab.
  I confirmed that the CLASSPATH is set correctly.  When I type echo %CLASSPATH%, I see
  C:\Program Files\Java\externaljars\ParserUtilities.jar which is correct.  But when I type
  java -jar Parse.jar (my executable) I get the error
  Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/artificialmed/Initialize</p>
  
  <p>Some additional information:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>When I put the ParserUtilities.jar in the ..\lib\ext directory, everything works.   </li>
  <li>I am running java version 1.6.0_16.   Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment </li>
  <li>In experimenting, I typed  java -cp C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\lib\ext>java -cp C:\Program Files\Java\externaljars\ParserUtilities.jar</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>and got this error "Could not find the main class: Files\Java\externaljars\ParserUtilities.jar"  but there is no main class (its just a collection of classes I use in a bunch of programs).    </p>
  
  <p>I do not have a Java SDK loaded in the environment, just a java JRE (Is this the issue?).   </p>