ADDITIONAL SYSTEM INFORMATION :
Windows 10
Linux 3.10.0-862.3.2.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon May 21 23:36:36 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM :
I must be missing something obvious because I would have thought that others would have found this behaviour long before now.
When starting the JVM and setting the system property java.class.path to point to directories and not specific jar files as shown here "-Djava.class.path=C:\directory\rmeval;.c:\fixes\bin\w64\bin\jvm\ext\;" we find that classes that are known to be in the jars in the directories are not found. If we point to the jar specifically , the classes are found. Wildcards also have the same problem. for example "-Djava.class.path=C:\directory\rmeval\*.jar;.c:\fixes\jvm\ext\*;" This problem presents on W64 and Linux in two different distributions of OpenJDK Java 11 that we know of : openjdk version "11.0.2" 2019-01-15 and openjdk version "11.0.1" 2018-10-16. Has this functionality been removed from Java 11


REGRESSION : Last worked in version 8u201

STEPS TO FOLLOW TO REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM :
set system.property using -Djava.class.path= <path shown above to directories containing jars>

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
expect to find classes contained in jars
ACTUAL -
classes not found unless specific jar is pointed to

FREQUENCY : always