How can a Java program get its own process ID?

There exists no platform-independent way that can be guaranteed to work in all jvm implementations. ManagementFactory.getRuntimeMXBean().getName() looks like the best (closest) solution, and typically includes the PID. It's short, and probably works in every implementation in wide use.

On linux+windows it returns a value like 12345@hostname (12345 being the process id). Beware though that according to the docs, there are no guarantees about this value:

Returns the name representing the running Java virtual machine. The returned name string can be any arbitrary string and a Java virtual machine implementation can choose to embed platform-specific useful information in the returned name string. Each running virtual machine could have a different name.

In Java 9 the new process API can be used:

long pid = ProcessHandle.current().pid();

You could use JNA. Unfortunately there is no common JNA API to get the current process ID yet, but each platform is pretty simple:

Windows

Make sure you have jna-platform.jar then:

int pid = Kernel32.INSTANCE.GetCurrentProcessId();

Unix

Declare:

private interface CLibrary extends Library {
    CLibrary INSTANCE = (CLibrary) Native.loadLibrary("c", CLibrary.class);   
    int getpid ();
}

Then:

int pid = CLibrary.INSTANCE.getpid();

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Java 9

Under Java 9 the new process API can be used to get the current process ID. First you grab a handle to the current process, then query the PID:

long pid = ProcessHandle.current().pid();

Here's a backdoor method which might not work with all VMs but should work on both linux and windows (original example here):

java.lang.management.RuntimeMXBean runtime = 
    java.lang.management.ManagementFactory.getRuntimeMXBean();
java.lang.reflect.Field jvm = runtime.getClass().getDeclaredField("jvm");
jvm.setAccessible(true);
sun.management.VMManagement mgmt =  
    (sun.management.VMManagement) jvm.get(runtime);
java.lang.reflect.Method pid_method =  
    mgmt.getClass().getDeclaredMethod("getProcessId");
pid_method.setAccessible(true);

int pid = (Integer) pid_method.invoke(mgmt);