java.lang.ClassNotFoundException

I am currently working through the book "Sams Teach yourself Java 6 in 21 days" and am on Day 6. Today's lesson is about using packages. I have created a Storefront application consisting of two classes -Storefront and Item. These classes are organized in a package, org.im.ecommerce.

I have set the CLASSPATH variable as .;c:\Program Files\java\jdk1.6.0_01\lib\tools.jar;c:\dev\java

The Storefront.class and Item.class files are in the c:\dev\java\org\im\ecommerce folder.

I have a second application called GiftShop that uses the aforementioned classes. This application compiles successfully but when I try to execute it, we get the java.lang.ClassNotFoundException

Here is a snippet of code from each file.

GiftShop.java

import org.im.ecommerce.*;

public class GiftShop {

public static void main(String[] arguments) {
Storefront store = new Storefront();
//body of program
}

Storefront.java

package org.im.ecommerce;

import java.util.*;

public class Storefront {
//body of program
}

Item.java

package org.im.ecommerce;

import java.util.*;

public class Item implements Comparable {

//body of program
}


This is direct from the console.
%PROGRAMFILES%\jEdit> java -classpath "$CLASSPATH;C:\Users\Oscar\Documents\workspace " -ms32m -mx32m GiftShop
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/im/ecommerce/Storefront
at GiftShop.main(GiftShop.java:6)
Process java exited with code 1

What else can I be looking at? Your help is greatly appreciated.

If you are using Windows to access an environment variable from the terminal use %VARIABLE_NAME% not $VARIABLE_NAME. In your case the get the CLASSPATH variable you should %CLASSPATH%.

It's working now. thanks

I would recommend not setting up an environment variable for the classpath, except as a local one.
System wide classpaths for Java are not a good thing.