Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError

A simple Hello World example.

public class Hello {

public static void main(String argv[]) {

System.out.println("Hello world !");

}

}

then, when you compile it:

> javac Hello.java

and want to execute it:

> java Hello

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Hello

We set the CLASSPATH and JAVA_HOME enviroment variable correctly, and the problem was still the same..
When we copied the Hello.class into a lib directory of JAVA_HOME, it worked, but not from the current directory !

We tried different versions of java.. and do you know where this stupid problem is?

in the CLASSPATH there should be:
CLASSPATH=.;c:\programme\jboss\lib;c:\programme\
j2sdk1.4.2_08\lib;c:\programme\j2sdk1.4.2_08\jre\lib; ...

yes.. a dot .. it means, that it will search for classes bytecode in the current directory !

you can also tell java to search the current directory with the -classpath parameter

> java -classpath . Hello