Question

I have a simple java program that creates a series of temporary files stored in a local tmp directory. I have added a simple shutdown hook that walks through all files and deletes them, then deletes the tmp directory, before exiting the program. here is the code:

Runtime.getRuntime().addShutdownHook(new Thread(new Runnable() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
        File tmpDir = new File("tmp/");
        for (File f : tmpDir.listFiles()) {
            f.delete();
        }
        tmpDir.delete();
    }
}));

My problem is that the thread that creates these files may not have terminated upon launch of the shutdown hook, and therefore, there may be a file created after listFiles() is called. this causes the tmp dir not to get deleted. I have come up with 2 hacks around this:

Hack # 1:

Runtime.getRuntime().addShutdownHook(new Thread(new Runnable() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
        File tmpDir = new File("tmp/");
        while (!tmp.delete()){
                for (File f : tmpDir.listFiles()) {
                f.delete();
            }
        }
    }
}));

Hack # 2:

Runtime.getRuntime().addShutdownHook(new Thread(new Runnable() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
        try{
            Thread.sleep(1000);
        } catch(InterruptedException e){
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        File tmpDir = new File("tmp/");
        for (File f : tmpDir.listFiles()) {
            f.delete();
        }
            tmpDir.delete();
        }
}));

Neither is a particularly good solution. What would be ideal is to have the shutdown hook wait until all threads have terminated before continuing. Does anyone know if this can be done?

Answer 1

Just keep track of all your running threads and then.join() them before shutting down the program.

This is an answer to the question title as the ewok has said he can’t use .deleteOnExit()