/* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 * 
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 * 
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

package java.io;

/**
 * Defines an interface for classes that can (or need to) be closed once they
 * are not used any longer. This usually includes all sorts of
 * {@link InputStream}s and {@link OutputStream}s. Calling the {@code close}
 * method releases resources that the object holds.
 */
public interface Closeable {

    /**
     * Closes the object and release any system resources it holds. If the
     * object has already been closed, then invoking this method has no effect.
     * 
     * @throws IOException
     *             if any error occurs when closing the object.
     */
    public void close() throws IOException;
}