In .NET, what if something fails in the catch block, will finally always get called?

Question

In a try/catch/finally block like:

try
{

}
catch()
{
   // code fails here
}
finally
{ 

}

So if there is an exception in the catch block, will finally always get called?

What if there is no finally, will the code after the catch block get run?

Answer 1

Assuming the process doesn't terminate abruptly (or hang, of course), the finally block will always be executed.

If there's no finally block, the exception from the catch block will just be thrown up the stack. Note that the original exception which caused the catch block to be executed in the first place will be effectively lost.

Stack overflow exceptions

As Jared noted, a stack overflow will cause the finally block not to be executed. I believe this terminates the program abruptly, but I could be wrong. Here's sample code:

using System;

public class Test
{    
    static void Main()
    {
        // Give the stack something to munch on
        int x = 10;
        try
        {
            Main();
            Console.WriteLine(x);
        }
        finally
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Finally");
        }
    }  
}

Results:

Process is terminated due to StackOverflowException.

Answer 2

The finally block will always get executed. If you exclude the finally block, and an exception occurs inside the catch block, then no code after the catch block will execute, because essentially you're catch block will fail and generate an unhandled exception itself.