thanks for the reply
is the runtime environment the "java virtual machine"?
i can get javac to work, and my hello world program compiles fine, however when i try to execute it using java hello.class command i get the following error message
exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: hello/class
can you tell me if i need to include something else
my hello world program contains the following java code
public class hello
{
public static void main ( String[] args )
{
System.out.println("Hello World");
}
}
the program ran fine in the netbeans ide