Is it safe to use Apache commons-io IOUtils.closeQuietly?

Question

Is this code

    BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(\"test.txt\"));
    try {
        bw.write(\"test\");
    } finally {
        IOUtils         


        

Answer 1

Yes, it's safe to use it but only for Java6 and lower. From Java7, you should user try-with-resource.

It will eliminate much of the boilerplate code you have and the need to use IOUtils.closeQuietly.

Now, you example:

    BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("test.txt"));
    try {
        bw.write("test");
    } finally {
        IOUtils.closeQuietly(bw);
    }

Can be written as:

   try (BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("test.txt"))) {
       bw.write("test");
   }

It's important to note that in order to use the try-with-resource approach, your resource need to implement a new interface called java.lang.AutoCloseable that was introduced in Java 7.

Also, you can include a number of resources in a try-with-resource block, just separate them with ;

   try (
       BufferedWriter bw1 = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("test1.txt"));
       BufferedWriter bw2 = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("test2.txt"))
   ) {
       // Do something useful with those 2 buffers!
   }   // bw1 and bw2 will be closed in any case