Should java try blocks be scoped as tightly as possible?

Question

I\'ve been told that there is some overhead in using the Java try-catch mechanism. So, while it is necessary to put methods that throw checked exception within a try block t

Answer 1

The second method will generate a compiler error that reader may not have been initialized. You can get around that by initializing it to null, but that just means you could get an NPE, and there's no advantage to that.