Command-Line Arguments

The single argument to main() is an array of strings, conventionally named args or argv. The length of this array (which would be passed as the argc argument in C) is available as argv.length, as is the case with any Java array. The elements of the array are the arguments, if any, that appeared on the interpreter command line after the class name. Note that the first element of the array is not the name of the class, as a C programmer might expect it to be. Example 2.1 shows how you could write a UNIX-style echo command (a program that simply prints out its arguments) in Java.

public class echo {
    public static void main(String argv[]) {
        for(int i=0; i < argv.length; i++) 
            System.out.print(argv[i] + " ");
        System.out.print("\n");
        System.exit(0);
    }
}

Program Exit Value

Note that main() must be declared to return void. Thus you cannot return a value from your Java program with a return statement in main(). If you need to return a value, call System.exit() with the desired integer value, as we've done in Example 2.1. Note that the handling and interpretation of this exit value are, of course, operating-system dependent. System.exit() causes the Java interpreter to exit immediately, whether or not other threads are running.

Environment

The Java API does not allow a Java program to read operating system environment variables because they are platform-dependent. However, Java defines a similar, platform-independent mechanism, known as the system properties list, for associating textual values with names.

A Java program can look up the value of a named property with the System.getProperty() method:

String homedir = System.getProperty("user.home");
String debug = System.getProperty("myapp.debug");

The Java interpreter automatically defines a number of standard system properties when it starts up. You can insert additional property definitions into the list by specifying the -D option to the interpreter:

% java -Dmyapp.debug=true myapp

See Chapter 14, System Properties for more information on system properties.