How to reference a system property within a user-defined .properties file?

Question

I want to define a property for a working directory(say work.dir=/home/username/working-directory), for my production .properties file, without hard-coding the

Answer 1

Get the property from the file, then replace supported macros.

String propertyValue = System.getProperty("work.dir");
String userHome = System.getProperty("user.home" );
String evaluatedPropertyValue = propertyValue.replace("$user.home", userHome );