Replacing finalize() in Java

Question

Object.finalize() is deprecated in Java 9, and I think I understand the reasons why, but I\'m having trouble seeing how to replace it.

I have a utility

Answer 1

IMHO it's not the responsibility of your application to tell the logger to clean up its own mess. The logger itself can and should do it as (unlike IO streams or DB connections), it's supposed to live long.

But you already provide logger.close()... OK, then I'd suggest the following:

• Ensure that close is idempotent, i.e., closing the logger the second time is a no-op.
• Use both Runtime#addShutdownHook and a PhantomReference, and let them both call logger.close(), so that it gets called both when the JVM terminates or your application gets GC'ed.