How can I close a stream without knowing its name?

Question

If I initialise a stream as follows

OpenWrite["~/example"]

How do I close this stream? Close seems to expect a name, but I do not know the name of the stream in this format.

[edit] - Thanks for all the responses. It seems the simplest solution was

Close[<full path name to file>]

I had previously tried Close["~/example"] but to no avail.

Answer 1

OpenWrite returns the stream it opens, so do this

str = OpenWrite["~/example"]

OutputStream["/Users/oldmg/example", 83]

Close[str]

Also, all streams have a name. In this case it is "/Users/oldmg/example".

Answer 2

In the event you did not save the stream object for some reason, You should be able to close by the file name, ie. simply

 Close["~/example"]

Answer 3

Typical usage:

(Write[#, "file contents"]; Close[#]) &@OpenWrite["test"];
(Print@Read[#]; Close[#]) &@OpenRead["test"];
(*
file contents
*)

Answer 4

The simplest, most general way to do this is probably via Streams[].

Set up some data ...

test = StringTake[ExampleData[{"Text", "DeclarationOfIndependence"}], 
   50] (* sample data ... *); 
str = StringToStream[#] & /@ 
  StringSplit[test]; (* converted to streams *)

Now the example ...

Streams[] (* all streams *)
ostr = Select[Streams[], SameQ[Head[#], InputStream] &] (* select inputStreamsonly *);
Close[#] & /@ ostr (* now close all the input streams ... *);
Streams[] (* only output streams remain*)