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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-04T13:49:58+00:00

I’m working on an application that generates a set of bitmaps and then loads

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I’m working on an application that generates a set of bitmaps and then loads them into a form for a user to pick from.

The bitmaps are generated from a small vector library which the user can add to. The code now creates the files and then deletes them immediatelyafter use, only to have to generate them again (making the UI take seconds to load) next time the user opens the UI.

So what I’m wondering is, is it okay to leave my bitmaps in the user temp folder “forever”, and regenerate them if they are not in the folder? I can’t expect to be able to store the images in the application directory, due to possible permission issues, and like I said, I can’t prepopulate the files since the user can add more.

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  1. Editorial Team

    Ideally you should generate any temporary data into the RAM rather to the file system.

    It is acceptable to depend on temporary files if you can make sure that your application is storing only a limited amount of such files per user. Any temporary files can be left behind on unexpected crashes/power offs no matter what your code does. You therefore need to implement a mechanism that will delete any stale files created by the same application in a previous session – presumably during its next start up.

    Assuming such a safety mechanism, intentionally leaving behind temporary files when the application exits sounds like a non-standard but reasonable “cache”.

    Caveat: the next version of your application may need a slightly different file format, and should detect, delete and regenerate any files in a mismatched format based on some simple versioning scheme to avoid cross-build dependences.

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