Java File separator, separatorChar, pathSeparator, pathSeparatorChar

java.io.File class contains four static separator variables. Here we will learn about them and when to use it.

1. File.separator: Platform dependent default name-separator character as String. For windows, it’s ‘\’ and for unix it’s ‘/’.
2. File.separatorChar: Same as separator but it’s char.
3. File.pathSeparator: Platform dependent variable for path-separator. For example PATH or CLASSPATH variable list of paths separated by ‘:’ in Unix systems and ‘;’ in Windows system.
4. File.pathSeparatorChar: Same as pathSeparator but it’s char.

Java File separator

Note that all of these are final variables and system dependent. Here is the java program to print these separator variables.

package com.journaldev.files;

import java.io.File;

public class FileSeparator {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("File.separator = "+File.separator);
        System.out.println("File.separatorChar = "+File.separatorChar);
        System.out.println("File.pathSeparator = "+File.pathSeparator);
        System.out.println("File.pathSeparatorChar = "+File.pathSeparatorChar);
    }

}

Output of above program on Unix system:

File.separator = /
File.separatorChar = /
File.pathSeparator = :
File.pathSeparatorChar = :

Output of the program on Windows system:

File.separator = \
File.separatorChar = \
File.pathSeparator = ;
File.pathSeparatorChar = ;

To make our program platform independent, we should always use these separators to create file path or read any system variables like PATH, CLASSPATH. Here is the code snippet showing how to use separators correctly.

//no platform independence, good for Unix systems
File fileUnsafe = new File("tmp/abc.txt");

//platform independent and safe to use across Unix and Windows
File fileSafe = new File("tmp"+File.separator+"abc.txt");

That’s all for file separators, we will learn more about java io in future posts.