Acceptable characters to pass to Main's varargs

[Blake Edward]

Does anybody have a list of acceptable, or better yet, unacceptable characters that when passed to Main as arguments will create a syntax error when running a simple java program. So far, ( and ) cause a syntax error, but other brackets do not. I assume parenthesis denote a method, a constructor??? and can't be used as arguments in the array?

I'm just jamming everything I can into the simple program as arguments to see what makes the program fail. Also, since I have already compiled the program, is this syntax error a runtime error?

[Ron McLeod]

Blake Edward wrote:So far, ( and ) cause a syntax error, but other brackets do not.

What errors are you seeing?  Most likely any errors would be from the shell where you are launching the application, not the application itself.

For example (Linux):$ echo (test) -bash: syntax error near unexpected token `test'

[Blake Edward]

java Zoo new (zoo)
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

is what I see. But it can just be one bracket, empty brackets, etc.

I'm using Terminal on a Mac.

[Ron McLeod]

That error is from the bash shell, not your Java application.  You will need to do whatever the shell requires so that it doesn't try parse and interpret your input - for example: enclose your input in single quotes, or escape specific character with a backslash:
$ java Zoo new(zoo) -bash: syntax error near unexpected token `(' $ java Zoo 'new(zoo)' $ java Zoo new\(zoo\)

[Blake Edward]

Thank you... that is the correct answer and backslashes work. I need to spend more time with this terminal...

[Campbell Ritchie]

There are all sorts of tutorials about Linux/Unix command lines available, most of which assume Bash is the default shell in use. Here is a tutorial I found about special characters.

[Blake Edward]

Thanks.