finally in exception handling

Question

What exactly does a finally block in exception handling perform?

Answer 1

The finally block always executes, regardless of whether or not the exception was thrown. The classic use example I can think of is closing files.

FileOutputStream stream = null;
try{
    // do stuff with the stream here
} catch (IOException ex){
    // handle exception
} finally{
    // always close the stream
    if(stream != null){
        stream.close();
    }
}