What is the 'finally' Block in Java?

[Damien25]

Hi Friends,
I have just started with the topic Exceptions in Java. In that I have done try and catch method which truly speaking, I didn't understand much. But the finally block was very confusing for me. I didn't understand anything about that. So please help me by explaining what is the 'finally' Block in Java? Hope that you guys got my point.!!

[Allan.d]

The finally block always executes when the try block exits. So you should be clear about the Try and Catch exceptions before moving to the finally block. The first step in constructing an exception handler is to enclose the code that might throw an exception within a try block. The try block has syntax as follows :

try {
    code
}
catch and finally blocks . . .

After the try block you will have to provide the Catch block. You should not write any code between the the end of the try block and the beginning of the first catch block. Look at the following :

try {
     
} catch (ExceptionType name) {
     
} catch (ExceptionType name) {
     
}

[Warner]

As said earlier, the finally block always executes when the try block exits. In short you can say that the Finally block in java is used along with the try-catch statements. The following is the normal structure :

try {
.....
} catch(Exception e){
....
} finally {
.....
}

In the finally block we usually have code that is used to perform clean up activities corresponding to the code in the try block. The exception that occurs in the try block control comes to the catch block and the rest of the code in the try block would not execute.

[MELTRONICS]

The best use of finally block is when we are connecting to the database. In the try block we would have the statements that instantiate the connection, prepared statement, result set etc. Using of an exceptions is very important because if the query fails then all these objects would be left open and the code would continue. Also the finally block is very useful because we nullify these statements so that even in case of an error the unused objects are cleared. Hope that you got the point why we use the finally block..

[Praetor]

The following sample of the coding may help you :

import java.io.*;
import java.util.logging.*;

public final class FinallyDemo {
  
  public static void main(String... aArgs) {
    nestedFinally("C:\\Temp\\example.txt");
  }
  
  private static void FinallyDemo(String aFileName) {
    try {
      BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(aFileName));
      try {
        String line = null;
        while ( (line = reader.readLine()) != null ) {
        }
      }
      finally {
        reader.close();
      }
    }
    catch(IOException ex){
      fLogger.severe("Problem occured : " + ex.getMessage());
    }
  }
  
  private static final Logger fLogger =
    Logger.getLogger(FinallyDemo.class.getPackage().getName())
  ;
}