Re: compiler warning

Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
Patricia Shanahan coughed up:

And I'm not convinced that it is a particularly useful restriction worthy of any hissy fit ;) from the compiler engineers at sun. Save for a minor slap in the face to the structured programming zealots (which I condone anyway), I just don't see the problem. 

Then I don't think you are looking hard enough.

Take this method:

public int foo() throws Exception
{
    try
    {
        bar();
        return 1;
    }
    catch( IOException e )
    {
        return 2;
    }
    finally
    {
        return 3;
    }
}

Quick, without thinking too hard about it, what happens in these cases:

- bar completes normally
- bar throws an IOException
- bar throws an exception other IOException

While you a seasoned veteran probably can figure out the answers don't you think the fact that it returns 3 in all cases might be confusing to a newbie?

If there were a valid use case for having a return statement in a finally block then there might be a reason to not have the warning.

Since there isn't a good use case for it and the behavior will be confusing to newbies and possibly cause undesirable behavior then it is a good idea to warn people.

--
 Dale King
.

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