Do I need to close the input stream manually after using IOUtils.toString(input) of commons-io?

java io apache-commons-io
Freewind picture Freewind · Dec 7, 2013 · Viewed 11.8k times · Source

Commons-IO has an IOUtils.toString(inputStream) method, which can read all content from an input stream:

InputStream input = getInputStream();
String content = IOUtils.toString(input);

My question is shall I close the input stream manually after using it?

I thought IOUtils may close it since it has read all the content, but I can't find that in the source code.

Answer

JB Nizet picture JB Nizet · Dec 7, 2013

The javadoc says:

Wherever possible, the methods in this class do not flush or close the stream. This is to avoid making non-portable assumptions about the streams' origin and further use. Thus the caller is still responsible for closing streams after use.

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