How to get the current working directory in Java?

Question

I want to access my current working directory using Java.

My code:

 String currentPath = new java.io.File(".").getCanonicalPath();  System.out.println("Current dir:" + currentPath);   String currentDir = System.getProperty("user.dir");  System.out.println("Current dir using System:" + currentDir); 

Output:

Current dir: C:\WINDOWS\system32 Current dir using System: C:\WINDOWS\system32 

My output is not correct because the C drive is not my current directory.

How to get the current directory?

Answer 1

See: Path Operations (The Java™ Tutorials > Essential Classes > Basic I/O).

Using java.nio.file.Path and java.nio.file.Paths, you can do the following to show what Java thinks is your current path. This for 7 and on, and uses NIO.

Path currentRelativePath = Paths.get(""); String s = currentRelativePath.toAbsolutePath().toString(); System.out.println("Current absolute path is: " + s); 

This outputs:

Current absolute path is: /Users/george/NetBeansProjects/Tutorials 

that in my case is where I ran the class from.

Constructing paths in a relative way, by not using a leading separator to indicate you are constructing an absolute path, will use this relative path as the starting point.

Answer 2

Code :

public class JavaApplication {   public static void main(String[] args) {     System.out.println("Working Directory = " + System.getProperty("user.dir"));   } } 

This will print the absolute path of the current directory from where your application was initialized.

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Explanation:

From the documentation:

java.io package resolve relative pathnames using current user directory. The current directory is represented as system property, that is, user.dir and is the directory from where the JVM was invoked.