From a programmer point of view it tends to be easier to pass arguments
as properties. It's also a handy technique if you have lots of classes
with main methods and your IDE can set properties for all of them.

java -Dnumber=1 -jar MyApp

        String number = System.getProperty("number");

In 1.0 and from 1.5 you can also read environment variables through
System.getenv.

#!/bin/bash
export MYAPP_NUMBER=1
java -jar MyApp

        String number = System.getenv("MYAPP_NUMBER");

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/tooldocs/solaris/java.html#options
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/System.html#getProperty(java.l
ang.String)
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/System.html#getenv(java.lang.String)

Tom Hawtin