Getting the System prompt character in a Java program

[Jayesh Netravali]

Hi,
Is there some way in which I can get the last character in the prompt sign of my system. For e.g. in Windows the prompt ends with a '>' sign. In Unix it might end with a '$' sign or a '#' etc.
I want to know if this last character of the prompt can be accessed in a Java program.

Thanks in advance,
Jayesh

[Jonathan Cone]

Though I don't know if you could (easily) programatically capture this character, however, you might be interested in:

System.getProperty("sun.desktop")

I'm not sure what the range of values this returns is, but you may be able to wrestle with it inside a switch construct to produce the desired effect.

If you figure out a better solution, let us know!

[Roshini Sridharan]

Hi,

Why not find the OS type and then fix the prompt values accordingly !!

you can get the OS Name through

String os = System.getProperty("os.name")

Hope this helps.

Regards
Roshini

[Joe Ess]

The prompt is configured via environment variables. In Windows, the environment variable is named "PROMPT". The default value is "$P$G" where "$P" indicates the path and "$G" indicates the greater-than character (other options include $D for current date and $T for current time). In the *nix world it's a bit more involved because one can configure colors as well as characters. By convention root uses a "#" and users have a "$". The "PS1" environment variable is what holds these values.