File IO: waiting for changes to be actually made to the filesystem

Question

Hello.
I' ve multiple threads that access concurrently to a file.
The operations are:
-open the file file1
-copy some lines to a new file file2
-delete the old file file1
-rename file2 into file1
the method is synchronized.
The problem is that, even after I close the files and return from the method, changes are not still propagated to file system.
So, if the threads are fast, even if the second thread enter the method after the first has terminated, the old file has not yet been deleted and the second not yet renamed, or anyway "handles" to such files not yet been relased at file system level.
I don't have to guarantee high concurrency..so it would be just good for me to be sure that every thread will wait until all changes are made to the filesystem and all the handles have been released correctly.
How can I do that?
thank you very much.
PA
Edited by: Paranoid_Fabio on Sep 16, 2008 1:40 AM

Answer 1

My code is:
private synchronized void updateCodes(String path,User u,String code) throws IOException{
                //open the file
          File dumpfile=new File(path);
          if(!dumpfile.exists())
               dumpfile.createNewFile();
          RandomAccessFile rep=new RandomAccessFile(dumpfile,"r");
          //create the temp file
          File temp=new File(path+".tmp");
          temp.createNewFile();
          PrintWriter out=new PrintWriter(new FileWriter(temp));
          long pointer=rep.getFilePointer();
          while(pointer<rep.length()){
               //do some line copies from the first file to the temp one               
          out.flush();
          out.close();
          rep.close();
          //delete the first file and rename the second
          dumpfile.delete();
          temp.renameTo(dumpfile);
     }