The File class ignores the file.separator system property?

Question

I am saving the pathname of a file to a String using:
String pathString = myfile.getAbsolutePath();
This gives me e.g. "D:\Java\Projects\myfile.txt" on Windows XP
If I want to save this value to a properties file, then load it in a new invocation of the program, this string will not be recognised as a valid pathname because of the backslashes.
So I want to use forward slashes as the file separator char.
I tried:
System.setProperty("file.separator","/");
However, this setting seems to be ignored by the File class, as I still get the same string with backslashes from the getAbsolutePath() method.
Can anyone help please?

Answer 1

Yeah... I've used that before. Never recalled having problems. I can't, however, recall if there were file paths saved.
Just tested with this:
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
public class Props {
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          try {
               Properties p1 = new Properties();
               p1.put("file", new File("C:\\test\\Props.java").getAbsolutePath());
               FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream("Props.properties");
               p1.store(out, null);
               out.close();
               FileInputStream in = new FileInputStream("Props.properties");
               Properties p2 = new Properties();
               p2.load(in);
               System.out.println("p1: " + p1.getProperty("file"));
               System.out.println("p2: " + p2.getProperty("file"));
          } catch(Exception e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
}created this:
#Tue Jun 21 10:53:38 EDT 2005
file=C\:\\test\\Props.java