Question

Does anyone know how to access the environment variables of the standard shell environment in Java? I am using the ProcessBuilder class and I have to specify specific environment variables used in a shell script I am running, these variables exist in the standard shell environment.

Accessing ProcessBuilder environment does not work.

Answer 1

You can get at the environment variables that existed when your program was created through System.getenv():

http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/environment/env.html

When a Java application uses a ProcessBuilder object to create a new process, the default set of environment variables passed to the new process is the same set provided to the application’s virtual machine process. The application can change this set using ProcessBuilder.environment.

It looks like your child process should get your environment automatically.