File.renameTo() fails

Question

I have eclipse plugin jface application. A thread writes file via BufferedWriter. After writing is done I close the buffer after that I try to rename the file.

But sometimes file is not renamed!

I tried to add some Thread.Sleep(BIG_NUMBER) between couple of retries this didn't help.

It looks like the file getting some kind of lock. (when I kill the jvm I can rename the file).

Is there something I can do?

OS: Windows XP, windows 7 JAVA version: 1.5

Answer 1

File.RenameTo() is platform dependent and relies on a few conditions to be met in order to succesfully rename a file, a better alternative is using

Path source = currentFile.toPath();
try {
     Files.move(source, source.resolveSibling(formattedName));
} catch (IOException e) {
     e.printStackTrace();
}

Read more here.

From the javadocs:

Many aspects of the behavior of this method are inherently platform-dependent: The rename operation might not be able to move a file from one filesystem to another, it might not be atomic, and it might not succeed if a file with the destination abstract pathname already exists. The return value should always be checked to make sure that the rename operation was successful.

Note that the Files class defines the move method to move or rename a file in a platform independent manner.