Exception thrown in catch and finally clause

Question

Based on reading your answer and seeing how you likely came up with it, I believe you think an "exception-in-progress" has "precedence". Keep in mind:

When an new exception is thrown in a catch block or finally block that will propagate out of that block, then the current exception will be aborted (and forgotten) as the new exception is propagated outward. The new exception starts unwinding up the stack just like any other exception, aborting out of the current block (the catch or finally block) and subject to any applicable catch or finally blocks along the way.

Note that applicable catch or finally blocks includes:

When a new exception is thrown in a catch block, the new exception is still subject to that catch's finally block, if any.

Now retrace the execution remembering that, whenever you hit throw, you should abort tracing the current exception and start tracing the new exception.

Exceptions in the finally block supersede exceptions in the catch block.

Java Language Specification

If the catch block completes abruptly for reason R, then the finally block is executed. Then there is a choice:

• If the finally block completes normally, then the try statement completes abruptly for reason R.

• If the finally block completes abruptly for reason S, then the try statement completes abruptly for reason S (and reason R is discarded).

This is what Wikipedia says about finally clause:

More common is a related clause (finally, or ensure) that is executed whether an exception occurred or not, typically to release resources acquired within the body of the exception-handling block.

Let's dissect your program.

try {
    System.out.print(1);
    q();
}

So, 1 will be output into the screen, then q() is called. In q(), an exception is thrown. The exception is then caught by Exception y but it does nothing. A finally clause is then executed (it has to), so, 3 will be printed to screen. Because (in method q() there's an exception thrown in the finally clause, also q() method passes the exception to the parent stack (by the throws Exception in the method declaration) new Exception() will be thrown and caught by catch ( Exception i ), MyExc2 exception will be thrown (for now add it to the exception stack), but a finally in the main block will be executed first.

So in,

catch ( Exception i ) {
    throw( new MyExc2() );
} 
finally {
    System.out.print(2);
    throw( new MyExc1() );
}

A finally clause is called...(remember, we've just caught Exception i and thrown MyExc2) in essence, 2 is printed on screen...and after the 2 is printed on screen, a MyExc1 exception is thrown. MyExc1 is handled by the public static void main(...) method.

Output:

"132Exception in thread main MyExc1"

Lecturer is correct! :-)

In essence, if you have a finally in a try/catch clause, a finally will be executed (after catching the exception before throwing the caught exception out)

Finally clause is executed even when exception is thrown from anywhere in try/catch block.

Because it's the last to be executed in the main and it throws an exception, that's the exception that the callers see.

Hence the importance of making sure that the finally clause does not throw anything, because it can swallow exceptions from the try block.