Resetting Standard output Stream

Question

I know that there is a function in Java to set Standard Output Stream to any user defined value using System.setOut method..

But is there any method to reset the standard output to the one which was stored earlier or the one which is standard output?

Answer 1

You can get hold of the file descriptor for standard out through FileDescriptor.out. To reset standard out to print to console, you do

System.setOut(new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream(FileDescriptor.out))); 

Another way is to simply hold on to the original object, as follows:

PrintStream stdout = System.out; System.setOut(new PrintStream(logFile));  // ...  System.setOut(stdout);                   // reset to standard output 

Answer 2

This is an old question, but it turns up in Google search all the time and I wanted to correct it. You can actually get it, by using the FileDescriptor class. Calling new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream(FileDescriptor.out))) should give you something which prints to stdout.

import java.io.FileDescriptor; import java.io.FileOutputStream; import java.io.PrintStream;   public static void main(String [] args) {     System.err.println("error.");     System.out.println("out.");     System.setOut(System.err);     System.out.println("error?");     System.setOut(new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream(FileDescriptor.out)));     System.out.println("out?"); }