Is a finally block without a catch block a java anti-pattern?

Question

I just had a pretty painful troubleshooting experience in troubleshooting some code that looked like this:

try {
   doSomeStuff()
   doMore()
} finally {
            


        

Answer 1

Try/Finally is a way to properly free resources. The code in the finally block should NEVER throw since it should only act on resources or state that was acquired PRIOR to entry into the try block.

As an aside, I think log4J is almost an anti-pattern.

IF YOU WANT TO INSPECT A RUNNING PROGRAM USE A PROPER INSPECTION TOOL (i.e. a debugger, IDE, or in an extreme sense a byte code weaver but DO NOT PUT LOGGING STATEMENTS IN EVERY FEW LINES!).

In the two examples you present the first one looks correct. The second one includes the logger code and introduces a bug. In the second example you suppress an exception if one is thrown by the first two statements (i.e. you catch it and log it but do not rethrow. This is something I find very common in log4j usage and is a real problem of application design. Basically with your change you make the program fail in an way that would be very hard for the system to handle since you basically march onward as if you never had an exception (sorta like VB basic on error resume next construct).