Question

Are Locks auto-closeable? That is, instead of:

Lock someLock = new ReentrantLock();
someLock.lock();
try
{
    // ...
}
finally
{
    someLock.unlock();
}

…can I say:

try (Lock someLock = new ReentrantLock())
{
    someLock.lock();
    // ...
}

…in Java 7?

Answer 1

No, neither the Lock interface (nor the ReentrantLock class) implement the AutoCloseable interface, which is required for use with the new try-with-resource syntax.

If you wanted to get this to work, you could write a simple wrapper:

public class LockWrapper implements AutoCloseable
{
    private final Lock _lock;
    public LockWrapper(Lock l) {
       this._lock = l;
    }

    public void lock() {
        this._lock.lock();
    }

    public void close() {
        this._lock.unlock();
    }
}

Now you can write code like this:

try (LockWrapper someLock = new LockWrapper(new ReentrantLock()))
{
    someLock.lock();
    // ...
}

I think you’re better off sticking with the old syntax, though. It’s safer to have your locking logic fully visible.