Java has several methods of running programs written in other languages. You can invoke a compiled program or executable script using Runtime.exec( ) , as I’ll describe in Section 26.2. Or you can drop down to C level with Java’s "native code” mechanism, and call compiled functions written in C/C++. From there, you can call to functions written in just about any language. Not to mention that you can contact programs written in any language over a socket (see Chapter 15), with HTTP services (see Chapter 17), or with Java clients in RMI or CORBA clients in a variety of languages (see Chapter 22).

There is an element of system dependency here, of course. You can only run MS-Windows applications under MS-Windows, and Unix applications under Unix. So some of the recipes in this chapter aren’t portable, though in a few cases I try to make them at least run on MS-Windows or Unix.