CWD : Java Glossary

CWD

Current Working Directory. In Windows, it is the directory that prints when you type CD on the command line. It is the default directory for the File class if you don’t specify a fully qualified filename. In Java, it is the current directory at the time java.exe was invoked. You can’t change it on the fly, but you can determine what it is with:

// Getting the CWD: Current Wording Directory
// namely the current directory when java.exe was invoked.
// It cannot be changed on the fly.
final String cwd = new File( "." ).getCanonicalPath();

// Which may or may not be the same as:
final String userDir = System.getProperty( "user.dir" );

You can of course spawn a script to a command shell that would be able change the CWD inside itself, but not for the spawning Java app.

You can fake a CWD by maintaining your own CWD variable and expanding all relative filenames to absolute yourself.

Files & Directories

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