Setting Java VM line.separator

Question

Hi, has anybody found a way how to specify the Java line.separator property on VM startup? I was thinking of something like this:

java -Dline.separator="\n"

But this doesn't interprete the "\n" as linefeed character. Any ideas?

Regards,

Martin.

Answer 1

I wouldn't do that if I were you. The line-separator is platform specific, and should remain so. If you want to write windows-only or linux-only files, define a UNIX_LINE_SEPARATOR constant somewhere and use it instead.

Answer 2

Try using java -Dline.separator=$'\n'. That should do the trick, at least in bash.

Here is a test-run:

aioobe@r60:~/tmp$ cat Test.java 
public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("\"" + System.getProperty("line.separator") + "\"");
    }
}
aioobe@r60:~/tmp$ javac Test.java && java -Dline.separator=$'\n' Test
"
"
aioobe@r60:~/tmp$