Do I need to close my FileOutputStreams?

Question

I have inlined temporary FileOutputStream that I am not able to explicitly close.

Is that a problem?

File raw = new File(uri.getPath());
Bitmap myBitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(uri.getPath());

File compressedPicture = MEUtils.createTemporaryFile(getPackageName());
// see here
myBitmap.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG,
                  mObjectiveDefinitionForTakingPictureResult.getQuality(),
                  new FileOutputStream(compressedPicture));

JpegImageMetadata jpegMetadata = (JpegImageMetadata) Sanselan.getMetadata(raw);
TiffImageMetadata exif = jpegMetadata.getExif();
TiffOutputSet outputSet = exif.getOutputSet();
outputSet.setGPSInDegrees(app.locationListener.getLongitude(),
                          app.locationListener.getLatitude());

File compressedPictureWithMetadata = MEUtils.createTemporaryFile(getPackageName());
// see here
OutputStream compressedPictureWithMetadataOutputStream = new BufferedOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(compressedPictureWithMetadata));
new ExifRewriter().updateExifMetadataLossless(compressedPicture,
                                              compressedPictureWithMetadataOutputStream,
                                              outputSet);

EDIT

It seems that BufferedOutputStream can conveniently wrap a FileOutputStream, directly by inline it in the constructor: http://developer.android.com/reference/java/io/BufferedOutputStream.html

Answer 1

Yes, you do.

While the garbage collector does close your FileOutputStream (by calling finalize), it is not a good idea to rely on it because it runs unpredictably.

This means that if you do not close your streams explicitly, you may run into a limit on the number of simultaneously open files or into inability to open a file until you close the previous stream to it (on Windows) or into unpredictable file content if you open several streams to the same file (on Unix).