try/catch vs null check in java

Question

Sometimes I face I must write a piece of code like this (usually it have more nested if and more complex structure but for the example is enought)

public voi         


        

Answer 1

The answer is use version A.

It is generally considered "bad design" to use Exceptions for flow control. Exceptions are for the "exceptional", especially NPEs which are totally avoidable using null checks. Further, using null checks, you can tell (ie log) which term is null (you won't know where the null is with your version B).

Note that performance is not an issue any more throwing exceptions (the stack trace for example is only built if you use it). It's a matter of clean code.

However, there are some case where using exceptions for flow control is unavoidable, for example the exceptions thrown from SimpleDateFormat.parse(), because there isn't a reasonable way to tell before making the call that your input is not parsable.