For doing the assignment in the Soda labs-- 1) rewrite the vl script to: /usr/sww/lang/jdk-1.3.1_07/bin/java NTLSystem.verblearn.VerbLearn If you're doing this at home you'll have to change the java location (or leave off the path entirely) 2) Add the following line to your shell login script: setenv CLASSPATH "./classes/ntl.jar:./classes/swing.jar:."