Today we discovered that the java Process class does not close its three standard file handles when the Process terminates. Me, I didn't find anything in the docs about this.

Running a loop where you create many Process objects may eventually reach your system's limit of open file handles. Many systems will close the unused handles after a while, so the final effect might be time dependent. Have fun. We did ;-)

Here's a test program that demonstrates the problem.

/** Demonstrate that java Process objects eat file handles * if their stdin, stderr and stdout channels are not explicitely * closed. * * To see this, run the class until it says "done executing" and * do an lsof on the java process (should show 60 pipe channels). * Then uncomment the three close() calls and rerun the test. */ public class Exec { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { int NMAX=20; final String command="bash -c exit"; System.err.println("Executing " + command + " " + NMAX + " times....");

for(int i=0; i<NMAX; i++) { final Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command); p.waitFor();

// These three calls are required to avoid eating file handles // (at least under macosx and linux) // p.getInputStream().close(); // p.getOutputStream().close(); // p.getErrorStream().close();

if(i % 10 == 0) System.err.print("."); }

System.err.println("Done executing - press ENTER to exit"); System.in.read(); System.err.println("Done."); } }