Can I find out if the java program was launched using java or javaw

Question

This is related to an earlier question by a different user, asking How to detect that code is running inside eclipse IDE.

I noticed that Eclipse always launches prog

Answer 1

Checking for System.console() didn't work for me, because of:

1. It requires JDK 6 or later
2. Console object is also missing, if application was run through the Runtime.exec(String) method. This was critical for me, because we using a lot of automated script.

So I'm using following solution:

private static boolean isJavaw() {
  try {
    System.in.available();
    return false;
  } catch (IOException e) {
    // invalid handle in case of javaw
    return true;
  }
}

Works fine with JDKs 5, 6 and 7.