javac throws a ZipException if you have a non-jar/non-zip file in the classpath. For example, the following command on a Linux system throws an exception

$ javac -classpath .:/usr/lib/libm.so Test.java

The documentation says that it should ignore non-jar/non-zip files. See <http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/tooldocs/solaris/classpath.html>. This is a regression from 1.4. 1.4 ignores such files, 1.5 does not. We see similar behaviour on our MacOSX version.

Looking at the code, I found the following code in src/share/classes/com/sun/tools/javac/util/Paths.java

    /** Is this the name of a zip file? */
    private static boolean isZip(String name) {
      return new File(name).isFile();
    }

This looks suspicious. It seems the code just checks to see if the file exists. It does not check to see if it is a valid zip file. bug 4971117 is slightly different but (I think) related to this bug.

Release Regression From : 5.0u2
The above release value was the last known release where this 
bug was known to work. Since then there has been a regression.
###@###.### 2005-07-11 21:17:32 GMT