I am trying to check if a certain java.io.File is open by an external program. On windows I use this simple trick:

```
try {
    FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
    // -> file was closed
} catch(IOException e) {
    // -> file still open
}

```

I know that unix based systems allow to open files in multiple processes... Is there a similar trick to achieve the same result for unix based systems ?

Any help / hack highly appreciated :-)