Environment Variable!!

[Brian Smith]

hi folks,
i found this about System Properties and Environment Variable. System properites is a feature that replaces the concept of

environment variables which is platform-specific

. could you please explain me why environment is a platform specific?
thanks.

[Maulin Vasavada]

hi sathi
here r things which will be platform (that is OS) specific,
1. file path separator
- '\' on windows
- '/' on unix based system
- ':' on Mac OS
2. PATH separator
- ';' on windows (see ur autoexec.bat if to see how u specify multiple values for a variable).
e.g.
SET CLASSPATH=c:\java\lib\tools.jar;c:\java\lib\dt.jar
- ':' on unix based systems
e.g.
CLASSPATH=/usr/java/lib/tools.jar:/usr/java/lib/dt.jar
- i am not sure about Mac OS...u can always google..
3. line separator
- \r\n on windows
- \n on unix
- i'm not sure about Mac OS

hth
maulin

[Maulin Vasavada]

okay..
i forgot to mention how System Properties replaces these environment specific values..
1. file path separator
System.getProperty("file.separator")
2. PATH separator
System.getProperty("path.separator");
3. new line character
System.getProperty("line.separator");
write the following code and run on different OS to see the results,
class testSP {
public static void main(String[] s) {
System.out.println(System.getProperty("file.separator"));
System.out.println(System.getProperty("path.separator"));
System.out.println(System.getProperty("line.separator").length());
}
}
regards
maulin