[news.eclipse.newcomer] Getting workspace from within a program

["R (Chandra) Chandrasekhar" <chandrac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Folks,

I am new to Eclipse and am trying to get the location of the current 
workspace and the root workspace from within a program.

The Eclipse FAQ book (p 291, FAQ 286) suggests:

IWorkspace workspace = ResourcesPlugin.getWorkspace();
IWorkspaceRoot root = workspace.getRoot();

I have tried to run this as a code fragment from within Eclipse with 
these two imports:

import org.eclipse.core.resources.*;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.*;

but have not been successful.

I tried running it as a JavascrapBook page (.jpage file with the 
requisite imports) but it said that the Workspace was closed.

All I want is to see that the above code does return what I would expect 
it to, so that I can use it to set some environment variables elsewhere.

What should I do to run it standalone?

Thanks for your help.

Chandra

[Cross-posted on the eclipse.platform newsgroup as well.]