Performing cleanup
with finally

There’s often some piece of code that you want to execute whether or not an exception is thrown within a try block. This usually pertains to some operation other than memory recovery (since that’s taken care of by the garbage collector). To achieve this effect, you use a finally clause^[41] at the end of all the exception handlers. The full picture of an exception handling section is thus:

try {
  // The guarded region: Dangerous activities
  // that might throw A, B, or C 
} catch(A a1) {
  // Handler for situation A
} catch(B b1) {
  // Handler for situation B
} catch(C c1) {
  // Handler for situation C
} finally {
  // Activities that happen every time
}

To demonstrate that the finally clause always runs, try this program:

//: c09:FinallyWorks.java
// The finally clause is always executed.
import com.bruceeckel.simpletest.*;

class ThreeException extends Exception {}

public class FinallyWorks {
  private static Test monitor = new Test();
  static int count = 0;
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    while(true) {
      try {
        // Post-increment is zero first time:
        if(count++ == 0)
          throw new ThreeException();
        System.out.println("No exception");
      } catch(ThreeException e) {
        System.err.println("ThreeException");
      } finally {
        System.err.println("In finally clause");
        if(count == 2) break; // out of "while"
      }
    }
    monitor.expect(new String[] {
      "ThreeException",
      "In finally clause",
      "No exception",
      "In finally clause"
    });
  }
} ///:~

From the output, you can see that whether or not an exception is thrown, the finally clause is always executed.

This program also gives a hint for how you can deal with the fact that exceptions in Java (like exceptions in C++) do not allow you to resume back to where the exception was thrown, as discussed earlier. If you place your try block in a loop, you can establish a condition that must be met before you continue the program. You can also add a static counter or some other device to allow the loop to try several different approaches before giving up. This way you can build a greater level of robustness into your programs.

Thinking in Java
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