Prevent java from handling path wildcards

Question

I have a program where I have to take paths from the command line as input, likely with wildcards such as ?, * and **. Java persists in expanding these paths on it's own, usually screwing up.

For instance:

java -jar myapp.jar C:/Hello/World/*

Gives me a String[] args that looks like this:

["C:\Hello\World\foo", "C:\Hello\World\bar"]

Not only is this extremely troublesome, it also messes up the ** wildcard:

java -jar myapp.jar C:/Hello/World/**

Gives the same thing as before, when ** should be a recursive search. I have an algorithm for doing this efficiently, which I originally developed on python, but it's pointless if I can't use it. Is there a way to prevent this from happening?

EDIT = I tried using different shells (PowerShell, cmd, eclipse), using different formats (no quotes, quotes, double quotes) and none of them worked.

Answer 1

Java is not doing that, it's your shell.

Quote the arguments:

java -jar myapp.jar 'C:/Hello/World/**'

Or

java -jar myapp.jar "C:/Hello/World/**"

Answer 2

This could be completely wrong, but try this:

java -jar myapp.jar C:/Hello/World/\*