Determining location of JVM executable during runtime

Question

How does one obtain the location of the executable of the currently running JVM during runtime? I would like to instantiate another JVM as a subprocess using the ProcessBuilder class.

I am aware that there is the java.home System property, but this doesn't specify the location of the JVM executable. I understand I could do something like this to get the path:

System.getProperties().getProperty("java.home") + File.pathSeparator + "bin" + File.pathSeparator + "java"

This code isn't platform independent, because the Windows executable's name is java.exe, not java. Is there a way to get the path of the JVM executable that takes the platform's idiosyncrasies into account?

Answer 1

You could always just use os.name to check if the user is running Windows or not. That'll work on OS X, Linux and Windows at

String jvm_location;
if (System.getProperty("os.name").startsWith("Win")) {
    jvm_location = System.getProperties().getProperty("java.home") + File.separator + "bin" + File.separator + "java.exe";
} else {
    jvm_location = System.getProperties().getProperty("java.home") + File.separator + "bin" + File.separator + "java";
}