Deleting files created with FileOutputStream

Question

Hi, I'm developing for the Android platform. My app creates a temp file with a simple call to:

FileOutputStream fos = openFileOutput("MY_TEMP.TXT",Mode);

It works fine because I can write to it and read it normally.

The problem is that when I exit from the app I want to delete this file. I used:

File f = new File(System.getProperty("user.dir"),"MY_TEMP.TXT");
f.delete()

But it always returns false and the file is not deleted. I have tried

File f = new File("MY_TEMP.TXT");
f.delete();

And it does not work either. Please advise!

Answer 1

You can't delete an opened file. You need to close the stream before delete.

fos.close();
f.delete();

That said, I would rather use File#createTempFile() to let the underlying platform do the automatic cleanup work and to avoid potential portability trouble caused by using relative paths in File.

Answer 2

Double-check, if the Stream is closed before you attempt to delete the file.

Answer 3

You have some solid answers already, but I just want to mention File.deleteOnExit() which schedules a file for deletion when the VM exits.

--edit--

You still should close any streams connected to the file.

Answer 4

Hi everybody, I checked on this posting and the best way to delete a file created from FileOutputStream is a simple call from the Context method deleteFile(TEMP_FILE) as simple as that.