Question

I thought about using the following code, but is there any cleaner way?

Process theProcess = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("java -d64 -version");
BufferedReader errStream = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(theProcess.getErrorStream()));
System.out.println(errStream.readLine());

Answer 1

Decided to post this as an answer:

public static boolean supports64Bit() {
    try {
        final Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("java -d64 -version");
        try {
            return process.waitFor() == 0;
        } finally {
            process.getInputStream().close();
            process.getOutputStream().close();
            process.getErrorStream().close();
        }
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // log error here?!
        return false;
    }
}

Closing all streams associated with a process is good practice and prevents resource leaks.

Not tested.