How to find out which process is using a file in Java?

Question

I'm trying to move a file from one dir to another in Java, but I got the following error message "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process."

How can I find out which process is using this file in Java ?

I'm on Win 7.

Theres no platform-neutral, Java specific way of doing that (afaik). — Perception, Mar 19 '13 at 21:19
Do you specifically need to do this from Java, or is a command-line approach suitable? If so, which platform? — Oliver Charlesworth, Mar 19 '13 at 21:19
see also this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/300559/move-copy-file-operations-in-java?rq=1 — Mel Nicholson, Mar 19 '13 at 21:26

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

If a command-line approach is viable, and you're on a Linux-like system, then lsof is your friend. There are about 10 gazillion flags for lsof, but for your needs, it should be as simple as:

lsof myfile

You should get output similar to the following:

COMMAND    PID    USER  FD   TYPE DEVICE  SIZE    NODE NAME
someprog   4660 foobar mem    REG  253,0 58400 4522314 myfile

EDIT

You say you're using Windows. I'm not familiar with Windows command-line tools. However, here's a question that may help: How can I determine whether a specific file is open in Windows?.

How to find out which process is using a file in Java?

1 Answers1