Methods to access the character-based console device, if any, associated with the current Java virtual machine.
Whether a virtual machine has a console is dependent upon the underlying platform and also upon the manner in which the virtual machine is invoked. If the virtual machine is started from an interactive command line without redirecting the standard input and output streams then its console will exist and will typically be connected to the keyboard and display from which the virtual machine was launched. If the virtual machine is started automatically, for example by a background job scheduler, then it will typically not have a console.
If this virtual machine has a console then it is represented by a unique instance of this class which can be obtained by invoking the {@link java.lang.System#console()} method. If no console device isavailable then an invocation of that method will return null.
Read and write operations are synchronized to guarantee the atomic completion of critical operations; therefore invoking methods {@link #readLine()}, {@link #readPassword()}, {@link #format format()}, {@link #printf printf()} as well as the read, format and write operationson the objects returned by {@link #reader()} and {@link #writer()} mayblock in multithreaded scenarios.
Invoking close() on the objects returned by the {@link #reader()}and the {@link #writer()} will not close the underlying stream of thoseobjects.
The console-read methods return null when the end of the console input stream is reached, for example by typing control-D on Unix or control-Z on Windows. Subsequent read operations will succeed if additional characters are later entered on the console's input device.
Unless otherwise specified, passing a null argument to any method in this class will cause a {@link NullPointerException} to be thrown.
Security note: If an application needs to read a password or other secure data, it should use {@link #readPassword()} or {@link #readPassword(String,Object)} andmanually zero the returned character array after processing to minimize the lifetime of sensitive data in memory.
{@code Console cons; char[] passwd; if ((cons = System.console()) != null &&}(passwd = cons.readPassword("[%s]", "Password:")) != null) ... java.util.Arrays.fill(passwd, ' '); } }
@author Xueming Shen
@since 1.6