How to get the current working directory in Java?

I want to access my current working directory using Java.

My code:

 String currentPath = new java.io.File(".").getCanonicalPath();
 System.out.println("Current dir:" + currentPath);

 String currentDir = System.getProperty("user.dir");
 System.out.println("Current dir using System:" + currentDir);

Output:

Current dir: C:\WINDOWS\system32
Current dir using System: C:\WINDOWS\system32

My output is not correct because the C drive is not my current directory.

How to get the current directory?

Solution 1:

Code :

public class JavaApplication {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println("Working Directory = " + System.getProperty("user.dir"));
  }
}

This will print the absolute path of the current directory from where your application was initialized.

Explanation:

From the documentation:

java.io package resolve relative pathnames using current user directory. The current directory is represented as system property, that is, user.dir and is the directory from where the JVM was invoked.

Solution 2:

See: Path Operations (The Java™ Tutorials > Essential Classes > Basic I/O).

Using java.nio.file.Path and java.nio.file.Paths, you can do the following to show what Java thinks is your current path. This for 7 and on, and uses NIO.

Path currentRelativePath = Paths.get("");
String s = currentRelativePath.toAbsolutePath().toString();
System.out.println("Current absolute path is: " + s);

This outputs:

Current absolute path is: /Users/george/NetBeansProjects/Tutorials

that in my case is where I ran the class from.

Constructing paths in a relative way, by not using a leading separator to indicate you are constructing an absolute path, will use this relative path as the starting point.

Solution 3:

The following works on Java 7 and up (see here for documentation).

import java.nio.file.Paths;

Paths.get(".").toAbsolutePath().normalize().toString();

Solution 4:

This will give you the path of your current working directory:

Path path = FileSystems.getDefault().getPath(".");

And this will give you the path to a file called "Foo.txt" in the working directory:

Path path = FileSystems.getDefault().getPath("Foo.txt");

Edit : To obtain an absolute path of current directory:

Path path = FileSystems.getDefault().getPath(".").toAbsolutePath();

* Update * To get current working directory:

Path path = FileSystems.getDefault().getPath("").toAbsolutePath();

Solution 5:

Java 11 and newer

This solution is better than others and more portable:

Path cwd = Path.of("").toAbsolutePath();

Or even

String cwd = Path.of("").toAbsolutePath().toString();