[geofft]

One might hope, but they didn't. How do you tell in Java if stderr is a TTY, and if so, what its width is? How do you do an NSS passwd lookup (as in getpwnam("pjmlp") in C etc.)?

(To be fair, these could be defended, very slightly, on the grounds that Java is a cross-platform language, even though other cross-platform languages have better answers. But then I'd raise the point about Java corrupting RLIMIT_FILES for processes it starts....)

[pjmlp]

The same way you can tell in Limbo, and its authors did know one or two things about UNIX and its evolution, although this might be considered moving goalposts. :)