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

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?

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.

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.

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

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.