New to Java

Can anyone tell me what is supposed to be in the /var/tmp folder? I read in another forum that a bunch of locked files get written to this folder on shutdown, but never get cleaned out unless you do it manually, which can cause sudden crashes and failures to start--problems I've been having. So, at any rate, sure enough in the root /var/tmp folder I have nearly a thousand files that I don't have in a newly created user's /var/tmp. Is there a strategy to cleaning out this folder e.g. start deleting the oldest files?
Any help would be appreciated.
Brian