How to check if a file is open by another process (Java/Linux)?

Question

I am trying to check if a certain java.io.File is open by an external program. On windows I use this simple trick:

try {
    FileOutputStream fos = new FileO         


        

Answer 1

Thanks for the original suggestion. I have one small upgrade that is somewhat important to that method:

FileOutputStream fos = null;
try {
    // Make sure that the output stream is in Append mode. Otherwise you will
    // truncate your file, which probably isn't what you want to do :-) 
    fos = new FileOutputStream(file, true);
    // -> file was closed
} catch(IOException e) {
    // -> file still open
} finally {
    if(fos != null) {
    try {
        fos.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

Cheers, Gumbatron