p.waitfor does not wait for process to finish before starting another process

[rotaryfreak]

Hi,

I'm creating a java program which will run other executable .jar files and the order of how these other jar files runs is important. I need to run 3 jar files. A.jar, B.jar, and C.jar. In my main program which will control the execution of my other jar files, this is what i have:

public static void main(String[] args) {
 
Program.processRequest(settings.ini)
 
}
//the settings.ini file will have the list of commands to execute
 

i then open the settings file and read the properties

String keyBase = "command";
                Enumeration he = props.keys();
                Process p;
                while (he.hasMoreElements())
                {
                    String hKey = (String) he.nextElement();
 
                    //if the key matches "command" then get the property and create the file
                    if (hKey.startsWith(keyBase))
                    {
                        String hName = props.getProperty(hKey);
                        System.out.println(TimeNow.timeNow() + ": Executing Command: " + hName);
 
                        try {
                            p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c start "+ hName);
                            p.waitFor();
 
                        } catch (Exception e) {
                            e.printStackTrace();
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
 

Basically, the loop searches the .ini file for the command, something like "java -jar A.jar settings.ini"
This works perfectly fine if i run each command separately, however, if i run the commands one after the other from within the loop, i.e:

p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c start "+ "java -jar A.jar");
p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c start "+ "java -jar B.jar");
p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c start "+ "java -jar C.jar");
 

all 3 .jar files will run at the same time.Is there a way to execute the second jar file ONLY AFTER the first jar file has completed? Similarly, the third .jar file executes only AFTER the second one has completed? The reason i'm doing it this way is that in the future, if i need to add more jar files to run after the 3rd jar file, i do not have to modify any code and i can just add the command in the settings.ini file.

Maybe i'm missing something about how waitFor works, or how the Process class works? I have tried to find examples on google, but i was not as successful as i had hoped.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thank you!