Interacting with NetHack

For no particular reason I decided to try to communicate with nethack through java. I learned that nethack normally communicates to the consoles standard out using WriteConsole() or something similar, so I tried running nethack with runtime.exec() and letting it communicate with the virtual machine, but clearly my expectations were unfounded since this did not work.
Here is what I tried first.

Code :

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try {
	rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
	p = rt.exec(program);
} catch (Exception ex) {
	System.exit(1);
}

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When that didn't work I tried this.

Code :

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try {
	BufferedReader botIn = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream));
} catch (Exception ex) {
	System.exit(1);
}
while (line = botIn.readLine() != null) {
	System.out.println(line);
}

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I've tried a few variations, but I never got back any lines from nethack's output. Is what I want to do possible with only java? What would I need to do to get this to work if it does happen to be possible? Also this looks like a nice forum, and tell me if I'm doing anything wrong.