How to get Java classpath separator?

Question

How to programmatically get Java classpath separator used in value of java -cp/-classpath option?

Answer 1

System property path.separator contains classpath separator for current platform. It can be obtained by

System.getProperty("path.separator");

From System.getProperties() documentation:

path.separator Path separator (":" on UNIX)

Values are : for Linux and Mac OS, ; for Windows.

Answer 2

For this purpose, you can rely on the constant File.pathSeparatorChar if you expect a char or File.pathSeparator if you expect a String.

I quote the Javadoc of File.pathSeparatorChar:

The system-dependent path-separator character. This field is initialized to contain the first character of the value of the system property path.separator. This character is used to separate filenames in a sequence of files given as a path list. On UNIX systems, this character is ':'; on Microsoft Windows systems it is ';'.