do I need to surround fileInputStream.close with a try/catch/finally block? How is it done?

Question

I have the following Java Class that does one thing, fires out values from config.properties.

When it comes time to close the fileInputStream

Answer 1

Yes, that is the common pre-Java 7 solution. However, with the introduction of Java 7, there are now try-with-resource statements which will automatically close any declared resources when the try block exits:

try (FileInputStream fileIn = ...) {
    // do something
} // fileIn is closed
catch (IOException e) {
    //handle exception
}