Guava tips: StandardSystemProperty

The JVM will always have a value for some predefined system properties, such as java.version which represents the running JDK version, and so on. The complete list is available in the JavaDoc for System::getProperties.

Guava defines an enum called StandardSystemProperty which contains an entry for each of these predefined values. All these entries have a method value which delegates to the System class.

For instance you can do:

assertEquals("andry", StandardSystemProperty.USER_NAME.value());

The most widely useful values include, in my opinion:

• FILE_SEPARATOR which represents the separator in paths: \ on Windows and / on Unixes;
• LINE_SEPARATOR, which represents the end-of-line in text files: \r\n on Windows and \n on Unixes;
• OS_ARCH, OS_NAME and OS_VERSION which give information about the running OS;
• JAVA_VERSION, which represents the JRE version;
• USER_HOME which represents the home directory of the current user;
• USER_DIR which represents the user’s working directory.

For example:

Arrays.asList(
        FILE_SEPARATOR, LINE_SEPARATOR,
        OS_ARCH, OS_NAME, OS_VERSION,
        JAVA_VERSION, USER_HOME, USER_DIR)
        .stream()
        .map(e -> String.format("%s: %s", e.name(), e.value()))
        .forEach(System.out::println);

will print something like:

FILE_SEPARATOR: /
LINE_SEPARATOR:

OS_ARCH: amd64
OS_NAME: Linux
OS_VERSION: 3.19.0-28-generic
JAVA_VERSION: 1.8.0_45-internal
USER_HOME: /home/andry
USER_DIR: /home/andry/code/blog