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javafilestreamresources

Is closing the resources always important?

Many times I met the statement that the application should always explicitly close all the resources that it opened.

My approach to programming is rather pragmatic and I don't like to blindly follow any convention that I don't clearly see benefits of. Hence my question.

Let's assume that:

  1. I have a small application
  2. It opens a few resources (e.g. files, database connections, remote streams) and processes it
  3. It works a few minutes and then it exits
  4. Let's say it's in Java (if the language is relevant)

Do I really have to care about closing all the resources that I opened? I guess all the resources I opened will be closed/released when the application/virtual machine exits. Am I right?

If that's true, are there any convincing reasons to care about closing resources in such small, short working application?

UPDATE:

The question is purely hypothetical, but the argument for not caring about that is that I may be just hacking together some quick script and don't want to write any unnecessary code not directly related to the problem at hand: closing resources, doing all this verbose try-catch-finally stuff, handling exceptions that I don't care about etc.

The point of the question is whether there are any practical consequences of not doing it.

Solution

  • I guess all the resources I opened will be closed/released when the application/Virtual machine exits.

    What happens with a resource which was not regurarly released is out of your control. It may do no harm, or it may do some. It is also highly platform-dependent, so testing on just one won't help.

    why should I care about closing these resources in such small, short working application?

    The size of the application shouldn't matter. First, applications usually grow; second, if you don't practice doing it the right way, you won't know how to do it when it matters.