Javac can't find class that is in the same directory

Question

I am trying to compile a Java file and I'm getting this error message:

$ javac -cp "bc-j-mapi-w-2.4.jar;apache-commons/*;json-org/*;lib/*" BrightcoveVideoQueryPOI.java
BrightcoveVideoQueryPOI.java:57: cannot find symbol
symbol  : class BrightcoveAPI
location: class BrightcoveVideoQueryPOI
        BrightcoveAPI brightcoveAPI = new BrightcoveAPI(BrightcoveAPI.PROD_READ_URL_TOKEN);
        ^
BrightcoveVideoQueryPOI.java:57: cannot find symbol
symbol  : class BrightcoveAPI
location: class BrightcoveVideoQueryPOI
        BrightcoveAPI brightcoveAPI = new BrightcoveAPI(BrightcoveAPI.PROD_READ_URL_TOKEN);
                                          ^
BrightcoveVideoQueryPOI.java:57: cannot find symbol
symbol  : variable BrightcoveAPI
location: class BrightcoveVideoQueryPOI
        BrightcoveAPI brightcoveAPI = new BrightcoveAPI(BrightcoveAPI.PROD_READ_URL_TOKEN);
                                                        ^
3 errors

This would suggest that javac cannot find the class BrightcoveAPI. I'm not sure what the problem is as it is in the same directory:

$ ls
apache-commons  bc-j-mapi-w-2.4.jar  BrightcoveAPI.class  BrightcoveAPI.java  BrightcoveVideoQueryPOI.java  json-org  lib

Solution

You need to include . (the current directory) in your classpath:

javac -cp ".;bc-j-mapi-w-2.4.jar;apache-commons/*;json-org/*;lib/*" BrightcoveVideoQueryPOI.java

Some notes:

• . is in the default classpath, but if you use -cp to specify an explicit classpath, then it's only included if you specify it.
• A previous version of this answer added . to the end of the classpath, but aioobe says that it's typically put first, which makes sense, so I've edited accordingly. (The classpath is searched in order, so if you have two copies of a class, one in . and one in a library, then you probably want the . version to supersede the library version, so you need to list it first. But of course, it's not usually a good thing to have two non-identical copies of a class!)
• What you've pasted looks like a *nix shell, but you're using ;, which is the separator expected on Windows. (On *nix the expected separator is :.) This may well be correct, e.g. if you're using Cygwin, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.