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NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:09:26 -0500
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 05:09:23 -0700
From: Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>
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Subject: Re: Good practice or not to close the file before System.exit(1)?
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Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.help:577

On 4/22/2011 4:39 AM, rossum wrote:
> On 22 Apr 2011 01:57:28 GMT, ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram)
> wrote:
>
>> rossum<rossum48@coldmail.com>  writes:
>>> The standard way to do this is by putting the close in the finally
>>> block of a try ... finally.  Have you covered them in your course yet?
>>
>>   How would this help in
>>
>> BufferedReader inputFile = new BufferedReader(...);
>> try { ... System.exit( 1 ); }
>> finally { inputFile.close(); }
>>
>>   ? I do not endorse writing »System.exit« in the middle of a program
>>   as above, but I though that was what the OP wanted to do.
>>
> Good catch, my mistake.  System.exit() bypasses any finally blocks.
> Ouch.
>
> To the OP: don't use System.exit(), throw an exception instead.

If the program should terminate with a non-zero status code, the OP has
to call System.exit(). Exceptions can only reduce the number of
different places where it is called, and put the calls at an appropriate
level in the call hierarchy.

Patricia