Kotlin coroutine can't handle exception

Question

I was playing around with coroutines and found some very strange behavior. I want to convert some asynchronous requests in my project using suspendCoroutine(). Here's piece of code showing this problem.

In first case, when suspend function is being called in runBlocking coroutine, exception from continuation goes to catch block, and then runBlocking finishes successfully. But in second case, when creating new async coroutine, exception goes through catch block and crashes the whole program.

package com.example.lib

import kotlinx.coroutines.async
import kotlinx.coroutines.runBlocking
import kotlin.coroutines.resumeWithException
import kotlin.coroutines.suspendCoroutine

object Test {
    fun runSuccessfulCoroutine() {
        runBlocking {
            try {
                Repository.fail()
            } catch (ex: Throwable) {
                println("Catching ex in runSuccessfulCoroutine(): $ex")
            }
        }
    }

    fun runFailingCoroutine() {
        runBlocking {
            try {
                async { Repository.fail() }.await()
            } catch (ex: Throwable) {
                println("Catching ex in runFailingCoroutine(): $ex")
            }
        }
    }
}

object Repository {
    suspend fun fail(): Int = suspendCoroutine { cont ->
        cont.resumeWithException(RuntimeException("Exception at ${Thread.currentThread().name}"))
    }
}


fun main() {
    Test.runSuccessfulCoroutine()
    println()

    Test.runFailingCoroutine()

    println("We will never get here")
}

That's what is printed on console:

Catching ex in runSuccessfulCoroutine(): java.lang.RuntimeException: Exception at main

Catching ex in runFailingCoroutine(): java.lang.RuntimeException: Exception at main
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException: Exception at main
    at com.example.lib.Repository.fail(MyClass.kt:32)
    at com.example.lib.Test$runFailingCoroutine$1$1.invokeSuspend(MyClass.kt:22)
    at kotlin.coroutines.jvm.internal.BaseContinuationImpl.resumeWith(ContinuationImpl.kt:32)
    at kotlinx.coroutines.DispatchedTask.run(Dispatched.kt:236)
    at kotlinx.coroutines.EventLoopBase.processNextEvent(EventLoop.kt:123)
    at kotlinx.coroutines.BlockingCoroutine.joinBlocking(Builders.kt:69)
    at kotlinx.coroutines.BuildersKt__BuildersKt.runBlocking(Builders.kt:45)
    at kotlinx.coroutines.BuildersKt.runBlocking(Unknown Source)
    at kotlinx.coroutines.BuildersKt__BuildersKt.runBlocking$default(Builders.kt:35)
    at kotlinx.coroutines.BuildersKt.runBlocking$default(Unknown Source)
    at com.example.lib.Test.runFailingCoroutine(MyClass.kt:20)
    at com.example.lib.MyClassKt.main(MyClass.kt:41)
    at com.example.lib.MyClassKt.main(MyClass.kt)

Process finished with exit code 1

Any ideas why this is happening - is it a bug, or am i using coroutines the wrong way?

Update:

Using coroutineScope { ... } will mitigate problem in runFailingCoroutine()

fun runFailingCoroutine() = runBlocking {
    try {
        coroutineScope { async { fail() }.await()  }
    } catch (ex: Throwable) {
        println("Catching ex in runFailingCoroutine(): $ex")
    }
}

Answer 1

I got struck by this behavior just yesterday, here's my analysis.

In a nutshell, this behavior is desired because async does not have the same purpose as in other languages. In Kotlin you should use it sparingly, only when you have to decompose a task into several subtasks that run in parallel.

Whenever you just want to write

val result = async { work() }.await()

you should instead write

val result = withContext(Default) { work() }

and this will behave the expected way. Also, whenever you have the opportunity, you should move the withContext call into the work() function and make it a suspend fun.