Why doesn t java io File have a close method

Question

While java io RandomAccessFile does have a close   method java io File doesn t  Why is that  Is the file closed automatically on finalization or something

User · Answer

Essentially random access file wraps input and output streams in order to manage the random access  You don t open and close a file  you open and close streams to a file

User · Answer

The javadoc of the File class describes the class as      An abstract representation of file and directory pathnames     File is only a representation of a pathname  with a few methods concerning the filesystem  like exists    and directory handling but actual streaming input and output is done elsewhere  Streams can be opened and closed  files cannot    My personal opinion is that it s rather unfortunate that Sun then went on to create RandomAccessFile  causing much confusion with its inconsistent naming

User · Answer

A BufferedReader can be opened and closed but a File is never opened  it just represents a path in the filesystem

User · Answer

Say suppose  you have   File f    new File  SomeFile    f length      You need not close the Files  because its just the representation of a path    You should always consider to close only reader writers and in fact streams

User · Answer

java io File doesn t represent an open file  it represents a path in the filesystem  Therefore having close method on it doesn t make sense   Actually  this class was misnamed by the library authors  it should be called something like Path

[java] Why doesn't java.io.File have a close method?

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