Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!aioe.org!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: markspace <-@.> Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: java.io.File Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 08:53:57 -0800 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 30 Message-ID: References: <1754083.312.1322839502470.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@prjr26> <5ushd716i6g4qncg620f49ancol20af51f@4ax.com> <20850741.465.1322842636010.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@prnu18> <4puhd7h1qgr5rq3cgeebmrt64cc7qfn004@4ax.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 16:54:08 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx04.eternal-september.org; posting-host="XjIWM99mD7Ijfdu600oVPA"; logging-data="6081"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+HtG26Ke9uxKQMJbEZ3msMsRTRU2cl7/M=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:8.0) Gecko/20111105 Thunderbird/8.0 In-Reply-To: <4puhd7h1qgr5rq3cgeebmrt64cc7qfn004@4ax.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:iggjqOfV8ue2qzmeWrPAgmYUeVw= Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:10431 On 12/2/2011 8:31 AM, Mark wrote: > On Fri, 2 Dec 2011 08:17:15 -0800 (PST), Lew > wrote: >> If there were a 'close()' method, as there is with streams, it would have >> nothing to do with GC. 'close()' is for resources (such as file handles). >> GC is for heap memory. I only suggested checking for packratted 'File' >> instances as a foolish guess. Now that I think about it, it is highly >> unlikely that unclaimed instances would have anything to do with your issue. > AFAIK many classes have a close() method to allow any underlying OS > resources to be explicitly freed without needing to wait for the > dispose() method to do this. If the File method does uses file > descriptors then we may assume that these could be left open until the > object is destroyed during GC. What Mayeul said. File is just a pathname, so of course it has no "close" method. You should be looking for FileInputStream, InputStream, OutputStream, RandomAccessFile, and all their subclasses (which there are quite a few). Just looking for File won't cut it, as most of those classes take other objects besides File to construct a stream. For example, FileInputStream can also be constructed from a path in a String. Maybe you knew this and just misspoke, but it seemed like a point of confusion.