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I only once had to deal with shutdown hooks, and that was on a tablet PC where a GUI shutdown hook didn't complete when System.exit() was called. But it's definitely good knowing about this mechanism. Thanks for the article.
Perhaps you could do a follow-up and explain what shutdown hooks Java already installs. Depending on the platform, there are some that get pre-registered.

I've not written the article myself... I just found it an interesting one and hence posted it here anticipating that others may also find it interesting and useful. Anyway, I hope the author of the article eventually reads the comment to follow up with the article on pre-registered hooks. Or may be I can post a comment on that site itself to ask that.

I found an interesting update on this article - Common Questions on Shutdown Hooks in Java (http://geekexplains.blogspot.com/2008/06/common-questions-on-shutdown-hooks-in.html).

Though, I personally didn't find them so common :-) A nice follow-up of the original article I would say.