Thread: Trouble with AudioInputStream not releasing a file hook?

So I have the following code in one of my classes.

		try
		{
			File f = new File(main.getWavFileName(0, tab));
			AudioInputStream audioInputStream = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(f);
			audioInputStream.close();
			audioInputStream = null;
			f = null;
		}
		catch(Exception e) {e.printStackTrace();}

When I comment out this code, I am able to delete the file being accessed by the audioinputstream. However, when I leave this code in, and later try to delete the file with

				try {
					Files.delete(Paths.get(f2.getAbsolutePath()));
				} catch (IOException e) {
					e.printStackTrace();
				}

I get a FileSystemException error saying "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process."

I assume that the first block of code is the problem, since commenting it out gets rid of the FileSystemException error and allows me to delete the file. However, I'm not sure how I can go further to ensure that there are no remaining references to the file I'm trying to delete. I'd also like to be sure to delete the file now and not on exit. I have also ensured that the first block of code has completed running before deleting the file. Any ideas?

Thanks!!

After some googling this appears to be a Java bug. The workaround is to call System.gc after setting the stream to null, like so:

AudioInputStream audioInputStream = null;
File f = null;
try
{
  f = new File(main.getWavFileName(0, tab));
  audioInputStream = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(f);
}
catch(Exception e) 
{
  e.printStackTrace();
}finally
{
  if(audioInputStream != null)
  {
    try
    {
      audioInputStream.close();
      audioInputStream = null;
      f = null;
    }catch(IOExcepiton exc)
    {
      exc.printStackTrace();
    }
    System.gc();
  }
}

fhoward,
it also could be the JVM synchronization problem. If you close a file in Thread 1 and try to delete or rename it in thread 2 you may run into this synchronization problem. Especially when you "pipe" as an output and try to delete it later your Operating System may play game with you. For example:

java MyApp > out.txt
....
java DelApp out.txt

The 1st app writes something in out.txt and the 2nd app read it and delete the file. It works 99% but sometimes the 1% may occur and you can't do about it...since you restart your machine