Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Running Java from Command line

The "Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: helloworldapp/HelloWorldApp" error comes when you are trying to run the HelloWorldApp Java program from the command line but either .class file is not there or Java is not able to find the class file due to incorrect classpath settings. The name of the class could be different in each case, it depends upon which class you are passing to java command for running from the command prompt. Another interesting thing to remember is that this error only comes in Java version less than or equal to Java 6 e.g. Java 1.5 or Java 1.4, if you are running in JDK 7 or Java 8 instead of this you will see "Error: could not able to find or load class HelloWorldApp". Technically, both errors come due to same reason and their solution is also exactly same.

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