Almost every article I read told me that you can't have chdir in Java. The accepted answer to this question says you can't do it in Java.

However, here's some of the stuff I tried :

geo@codebox:~$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_14"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_14-b08)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 14.0-b16, mixed mode, sharing)

Here's a test class I'm using :

import java.io.*;

public class Ch {
 public static void main(String[] args) {
  System.out.println(new File(".").getAbsolutePath());
  System.setProperty("user.dir","/media");
  System.out.println(new File(".").getAbsolutePath());
 }
}

geo@codebox:~$ pwd
/home/geo
geo@codebox:~$ java Ch
/home/geo/.
/media/.

Please explain why this worked. Can I use this from now on and expect it to work the same way on all platforms?