How to properly handle an IOException from close()

Question

The Java I/O classes java.io.Reader, java.io.Writer, java.io.InputStream, java.io.OutpuStream and their various subclasses al

Answer 1

Generally resource handling should look like this:

final Resource resource = context.acquire();
try {
    use(resource);
} finally {
    resource.release();
}

In (the unlikely) case of release throwing an exception, any exception thrown by use will be dropped. I don't have a problem with the exception thrown closest to the catcher winning. I believe ARM blocks in JDK7(?) will do something crazy in this case, like rethrowing the use exception with the release exception attached.

If you use the Execute Around idiom, you can put these decisions and potentially messy code in one (or few) places.