Closeable.java revision 4fefecee9d4a5d2a4510f516b4015607b19e8d09 
1/* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
2 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
3 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
4 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
5 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
6 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
7 *
8 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
9 *
10 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
11 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
12 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
13 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
14 * limitations under the License.
15 */
16
17package java.io;
18
19/**
20 * Defines an interface for classes that can (or need to) be closed once they
21 * are not used any longer. This usually includes all sorts of
22 * {@link InputStream}s and {@link OutputStream}s. Calling the {@code close}
23 * method releases resources that the object holds.
24 */
25public interface Closeable {
26
27    /**
28     * Closes the object and release any system resources it holds. If the
29     * object has already been closed, then invoking this method has no effect.
30     *
31     * @throws IOException
32     *             if any error occurs when closing the object.
33     */
34    public void close() throws IOException;
35}