System Shutdown

Answer:
Up until just recently the answer was no. But Sun keeps on adding new APIs to the ever-growing Java platform. The 1.3 version of the Java 2 SDK adds the addShutdownHook(Thread hook) method to java.lang.Runtime. This method registers a thread to execute when the JVM shuts down. The JVM will shut itself down when your program exits normally or when it is terminated by the operating system. Before exiting, the JVM will execute all threads that have been registered with addShutdownHook() in an unspecified order.

You should make sure these threads are short-lived and avoid deadlocks because the JVM may not be allowed too much time to shut down if terminated by an operating system shutdown. There is no way to determine if a shutdown hook thread is being executed due to a normal program exit or an external event. However, if your Java program is a Unix daemon or NT service, it will only exit due to an external event and a shutdown hook can assume that either the operating system is shutting down or the program is being explicitly killed by the user.