The finally Block

The finally block always executes when the try block exits. This ensures that the finally block is executed even if an unexpected exception occurs. But finally is useful for more than just exception handling — it allows the programmer to avoid having cleanup code accidentally bypassed by a return, continue, or break. Putting cleanup code in a finally block is always a good practice, even when no exceptions are anticipated.

The try block of the writeList method that you’ve been working with here opens a PrintWriter. The program should close that stream before exiting the writeList method. This poses a somewhat complicated problem because writeList‘s try block can exit in one of three ways.

1. The new FileWriter statement fails and throws an IOException.
2. The list.get(i) statement fails and throws an IndexOutOfBoundsException.
3. Everything succeeds and the try block exits normally.

The runtime system always executes the statements within the finally block regardless of what happens within the try block. So it’s the perfect place to perform cleanup.

The following finally block for the writeList method cleans up and then closes the PrintWriter.

finally {
    if (out != null) { 
        System.out.println("Closing PrintWriter");
        out.close(); 
    } else { 
        System.out.println("PrintWriter not open");
    } 
}