The Old New Thing

How do I find out which process has a file open?

February 17, 2012 Feb 17, 2012 02/17/12

Raymond Chen

Classically, there was no way to find out which process has a file open. A file object has a reference count, and when the reference count drops to zero, the file is closed. But there's nobody keeping track of which processes own how many references. (And that's ignoring the case that the reference is not coming from a process in the first ...