Listing the running processes on a system in a Platform independent manner

[Ajay Saxena]

I was exploring the possibility of listing the running processes on a system in a Platform independent manner in Java,and found that such a thing is not possible using Java libraries.

Of course ,we can execute platform specific scripts using Runtime.exec()to enumerate currently executing processes on a system,but there are no standard APIs to do that seamlessly across all platforms.

Another approach is to plug in system specific programs into a Java Application using JNI.

Any comments on this?
[ August 01, 2008: Message edited by: Ajay Saxena ]

[Campbell Ritchie]

The title to this thread sounds like a contradiction in terms; you can only list running processes by interaction with the OS, and that is platform-specific.

[Ajay Saxena]

The title to this thread sounds like a contradiction in terms; you can only list running processes by interaction with the OS, and that is platform-specific.

Well, interaction with OS is indeed platform specific,but then JVM implementation is platform specific too.

Therefore I was wondering if the Java platform provides some standard APIs to enumerate processes on any OS. The API implementation would definitely be platform specific and therefore native.

Hope that makes sense!

[Campbell Ritchie]

Can't think of anything. There's nothing like that in the java.lang.System class. Because Java is designed for system independence, that is not the sort of thing one would include in an API.

Anybody else know of anything?

[Daniel Chemko]

Nope. There isn't even a standard API for getting your own process PID, which is really annoying for writing PID files. There are solutions, but they all involve calling outside java land.