Native File Locks in Java

Since Java 1.4 there is a native IO layer. Of one the things it allows is, to create native file locks that get acknowledged by both fcntl and flock style locking. This is tremendously helpful if you need to share resources with native programs. What is in C

int fd = open("/path/to/file", O_RDWR);

if (flock(fd,LOCK_EX) != 0 ) { ... }

printf("locked file\npress return");
char c = getchar();

if (flock(fd,LOCK_UN) != 0 ) { ... }

printf("released file\n");
close(fd);

and

int fd = open("/path/to/file", O_RDWR);

struct flock lock;
lock.l_type = F_WRLCK;
lock.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
lock.l_start = 0;
lock.l_len = 0;
lock.l_pid = 0;

if (fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &lock) == -1) { ... }

printf("locked file\npress return");
char c = getchar();

lock.l_type = F_UNLCK;

if (fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &lock) == -1) { ... }

printf("released file\n");
close(fd);

becomes in java

File file = new File("/path/to/file");
FileChannel channel =
  new RandomAccessFile(file, "rw").getChannel();
FileLock lock = channel.lock();

System.out.println("locked file\npress return");
System.in.read();

lock.release();
System.out.println("released file\n");