Why would you ever implement finalize()?

Question

I\'ve been reading through a lot of the rookie Java questions on finalize() and find it kind of bewildering that no one has really made it plain that finalize()

Answer 1

Edit: Okay, it really doesn't work. I implemented it and thought if it fails sometimes that's ok for me but it did not even call the finalize method a single time.

I am not a professional programmer but in my program I have a case that I think to be an example of a good case of using finalize(), that is a cache that writes its content to disk before it is destroyed. Because it is not necessary that it is executed every time on destruction, it does only speed up my program, I hope that it i didn't do it wrong.

@Override
public void finalize()
{
    try {saveCache();} catch (Exception e)  {e.printStackTrace();}
}

public void saveCache() throws FileNotFoundException, IOException
{
    ObjectOutputStream out = new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("temp/cache.tmp"));
    out.writeObject(cache);
}