A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
The installer shall append the .JAR extension to the PATHEXT environment variable.

JUSTIFICATION :
The Windows command shell is able to find files wihtout giving its extension and without further knowledge of its actual location. For example, typically .COM, .EXE, .BAT, .CMD and a lot more can be started with omitted extension, and their location will get determined by scanning several folders.

The idea is that the user only gives the name of a command, but not information about its implementation (i. e. what file type it is or where to find that file).

Internally this mechanism is using two variables: PATH for a list of directories to scan for files, and PATHEXT for a list of extensions for which this mechanism shall work.

  To align Java with this mechanism, it would be useful if the installer would add .JAR to the PATHEXT list, so people can just give the name of a JAR (without path and extension) and the machine will search for the JAR and start it, independent of where it is located and independent of the actual case (.jar, .JAR, .Jar, etc.) of the extension. This makes using Java even more friendly, convenient and look like a good citizen on Windows.

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
The PATHEXT environment variable should get appended by this String:

;.JAR
ACTUAL -
The PATHEXT environment variable is not trouched.

---------- BEGIN SOURCE ----------
SET PATHEXT=%PATHEXT%;.JAR
---------- END SOURCE ----------

CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
Manually appending .JAR to the PATHEXT list using Windows's configuration panel.