Article
11/18/2011

Environment Class

Microsoft Silverlight will reach end of support after October 2021. Learn more.

Provides information about, and means to manipulate, the current environment and platform. This class cannot be inherited.

Inheritance Hierarchy

System.Object
System.Environment

Namespace: System
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)

Syntax

'Declaration
<ComVisibleAttribute(True)> _
Public NotInheritable Class Environment

[ComVisibleAttribute(true)]
public static class Environment

The Environment type exposes the following members.

Properties

	Name	Description
	CurrentDirectory	When called by trusted applications, gets the fully qualified path of the current working directory.
	ExitCode	Gets or sets the exit code of the process.
	HasShutdownStarted	Gets a value indicating whether the common language runtime is shutting down or the current application domain is unloading.
	NewLine	Gets the newline string defined for this environment.
	OSVersion	Gets an OperatingSystem object that contains the current platform identifier and version number.
	ProcessorCount	Gets the number of processors on the current machine.
	TickCount	Gets the number of milliseconds elapsed since the system started.
	Version	Gets a Version object that describes the major, minor, build, and revision numbers of the common language runtime.

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Methods

	Name	Description
	GetFolderPath	Gets the path to the system special folder identified by the specified enumeration.

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Remarks

Use the Environment class to retrieve information such as command-line arguments, the exit code, environment variable settings, contents of the call stack, time since last system boot, and the version of the common language runtime.

Examples

The following example demonstrates displays a list of information about the current environment.

Note:
To run this example, see Building Examples That Use a Demo Method and a TextBlock Control.

' Sample for Environment class summary

Class Example
   Public Shared Sub Demo(ByVal outputBlock As System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock)
            outputBlock.Text &= "-- Environment members --" & vbCrLf

            outputBlock.Text &= String.Format("ExitCode: {0}", Environment.ExitCode) & vbCrLf
            outputBlock.Text &= String.Format("HasShutDownStarted: {0}", Environment.HasShutdownStarted) & vbCrLf
            outputBlock.Text &= String.Format("NewLine: {0}  first line{0}  second line{0}" & _
                              "  third line", Environment.NewLine) & vbCrLf
            outputBlock.Text &= String.Format("OSVersion: {0}", Environment.OSVersion) & vbCrLf
            outputBlock.Text &= String.Format("TickCount: {0}", Environment.TickCount) & vbCrLf
            outputBlock.Text &= String.Format("Version: {0}", Environment.Version) & vbCrLf
   End Sub
End Class

// Sample for Environment class summary
using System;

class Example
{
   public static void Demo(System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock outputBlock)
   {
    outputBlock.Text += "-- Environment members --" + "\n";

    outputBlock.Text += String.Format("ExitCode: {0}", Environment.ExitCode) + "\n";

    outputBlock.Text += String.Format("HasShutdownStarted: {0}", Environment.HasShutdownStarted) + "\n";

    outputBlock.Text += String.Format("NewLine: {0}  first line{0}  second line{0}  third line",
                          Environment.NewLine) + "\n";

    outputBlock.Text += String.Format("OSVersion: {0}", Environment.OSVersion.ToString()) + "\n";

    outputBlock.Text += String.Format("TickCount: {0}", Environment.TickCount) + "\n";

    outputBlock.Text += String.Format("Version: {0}", Environment.Version.ToString()) + "\n";
   }
}

Version Information

Silverlight

Supported in: 5, 4, 3

Silverlight for Windows Phone

Supported in: Windows Phone OS 7.1, Windows Phone OS 7.0

XNA Framework

Supported in: Xbox 360, Windows Phone OS 7.0

Platforms

For a list of the operating systems and browsers that are supported by Silverlight, see Supported Operating Systems and Browsers.

Thread Safety

Any public static (Shared in Visual Basic) members of this type are thread safe. Any instance members are not guaranteed to be thread safe.

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