File.separator vs. File.pathSeparator

accepted

java.io.File class contains four static separator variables. For better understanding, Let's understand with the help of some code

1. separator: Platform dependent default name-separator character as String. For windows, it’s ‘\’ and for unix it’s ‘/’
2. separatorChar: Same as separator but it’s char
3. 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. pathSeparatorChar: Same as pathSeparator but it’s char

Note that all of these are final variables and system dependent.

Here is the java program to print these separator variables. FileSeparator.java

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

from   http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27746419/file-separator-vs-file-pathseparator