How to change command prompt (console) window title from command line Java app?

Question

How to change and update the title of the command prompt window from the java command line application? Every time I run my application, the command prompt window title shows: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe - java MyApp.

I'd like to change and update the window title as the java program runs, for example as wget(win32) updates downloading status in the title: Wget [12%].

Answer 1

This depends on your terminal emulator, but essentially it's just printing out control sequences to the console.

Now I'm not clear on what control sequences CMD.EXE responds to (I haven't one available to try this on) but I hear there's a command called TITLE which sets the title of the window. I tried piping TITLE's output to a file, but apparently, it doesn't actually set the title by outputting control characters. The START command can take a parameter which is title of the window followed by the command to run in the window. So something like

cmd TITLE "lovely Application that is in a command window." && "java" MyApp
REM or
start "lovely Application that is java based." java MyApp

Personally I would just bundle the whole thing with a shortcut where you can edit the properties such as the current directory, the command, it's parameters, and the window size, style and title (if I remember rightly). Give it a nice icon and people will use it.

Answer 2

following dlamblin's revelation ;-) here's a python code. note that there are 2 different commands in most programming languages:

• system
• exec

system will issue a system command, exec indeed spawns a new process. thus:

C:\>python
>>> import os
>>> os.system("title berry tsakala")

which works inside a running program. Just find the java equivalent.

Answer 3

Here's my solution using JNA:

import com.sun.jna.Library;

import com.sun.jna.Native;

import com.sun.jna.Platform;

public class SetTitle {

public interface CLibrary extends Library {
    CLibrary INSTANCE = (CLibrary)
        Native.loadLibrary((Platform.isWindows() ? "kernel32" : "c"),
                           CLibrary.class);

    boolean SetConsoleTitleA(String title);
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    CLibrary.INSTANCE.SetConsoleTitleA("Testing 123");
    System.exit(0);
}

}