groovy/groovy-core/xdocs/running.wiki

1 Running Groovy scripts

Groovy scripts are a number of statements and class declarations in a text file.
Groovy scripts can be used similarly to other scripting languages.
There are various ways of running Groovy scripts

1.1 Using the interactive console

Groovy has a Swing interactive console that allows you to type in commmands and execute them
rather like using an SQL query tool. History is available and such like so you can move forwards
and backwards through commands etc. 

If you {link:install|install.html} a binary distribution of Groovy then you can run the
Groovy Swing console by typing this on the command line. 

{code:shell}
groovyConsole
{code}

For a command line interactive shell type 

{code:shell}
groovysh
{code}

To run the Swing Groovy console from a source distribution type... 

{code:shell}
maven console
{code}

To see how to add things to the classpath see below


1.1 Running Groovy scripts from your IDE

There is a helper class called {link:GroovyShell|apidocs/groovy/lang/GroovyShell.html} which 
has a main(String[]) method for running any Groovy script. 
You can run any groovy script as follows 

{code:shell}
java groovy.lang.GroovyShell foo/MyScript.groovy [arguments]
{code}

You can then run the above Groovy main() in your IDE to run or debug any Groovy script. 

1.1 Running Groovy scripts from the command line

There are shell scripts called 'groovy' or 'groovy.bat' depending on your platform
which is part of the Groovy runtime.
Once the runtime is {link:installed|install.html} you can just run groovy like any other script... 

{code:shell}
groovy foo/MyScript.groovy [arguments]
{code}

To work from the latest and greatest Groovy, do a cvs checkout and then type 

{code:shell}
maven groovy:make-install
{code}

You'll then have a full binary distribution made for you in groovy/target/install.
You can then add groovy/target/install/bin to your path and you can then run groovy scripts
easily from the command line. 

To see how to add things to the classpath see below


1.1 Creating Unix scripts with Groovy

You can write unix scripts with Groovy and execute them directly on the command line as 
if they were normal unix shell scripts. Providing you have installed the Groovy binary
distribution (see above) and 'groovy' is on your PATH then the following should work.
There now follows a sample script which is {link:in CVS|http://cvs.groovy.codehaus.org/viewcvs.cgi/groovy/groovy-core/src/script/helloWorld?rev=HEAD} . 
Save it as helloWorld. 

{code:shell}
#!/usr/bin/env groovy
println("Hello world")
for (a in this.args) {
  println("Argument: " + a)
}
{code}

Then to run the script from the command line, just make sure the script is executable then you 
can call it 

{code:shell}
chmod +x helloWorld
./helloWorld
{code}


1.1 Adding things to the classpath

When running command line scripts or interactive shells you might want to add things to your classpath 
such as JDBC drivers or JMS implementations etc. Do do this you have a few choices

* create a __~/.groovy/lib__ directory and add whatever jars you like there
* add things to your CLASSPATH environment variable
* pass -classpath (or -cp) into the command you used to create the shell or run the script