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
Public propertyStatic memberSupported by Silverlight for Windows PhoneSupported by Xbox 360 CurrentDirectory When called by trusted applications, gets the fully qualified path of the current working directory.
Public propertyStatic member ExitCode Gets or sets the exit code of the process.
Public propertyStatic memberSupported by Silverlight for Windows PhoneSupported by Xbox 360 HasShutdownStarted Gets a value indicating whether the common language runtime is shutting down or the current application domain is unloading.
Public propertyStatic memberSupported by Silverlight for Windows PhoneSupported by Xbox 360 NewLine Gets the newline string defined for this environment.
Public propertyStatic memberSupported by Silverlight for Windows PhoneSupported by Xbox 360 OSVersion Gets an OperatingSystem object that contains the current platform identifier and version number.
Public propertyStatic memberSupported by Silverlight for Windows PhoneSupported by Xbox 360 ProcessorCount Gets the number of processors on the current machine.
Public propertyStatic memberSupported by Silverlight for Windows PhoneSupported by Xbox 360 TickCount Gets the number of milliseconds elapsed since the system started.
Public propertyStatic memberSupported by Silverlight for Windows PhoneSupported by Xbox 360 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
Public methodStatic memberSupported by Silverlight for Windows PhoneSupported by Xbox 360 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.

' 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.

See Also

Reference