An easy way to do Unix piping when executing Unix commands from Java or Groovy In unix you can issue a command like: sh -c 'ls -l | sort" which is calling the 'sh' shell with a command and returning the result. I wrote the example in groovy but the trick works with Runtime.exec(String[] cmd) as well.

gistfile1.groovy

def cmd = ['sh', '-c', 'ls -l | sort']
def p = cmd.execute()
println p.text

// Java would be something like
// String[] cmd = { "sh", "-c", "ls -l | sort" };
// Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmd);
// ...