Painless resource management in java

Question

In C++ we acquiring a resource in a constructor and release it in a destructor.

So when an exception rises in a middle of a function there will be no resource leak or locked mutexes or whatever.

AFAIK java classes don't have destructors. So how does one do the resource management in Java.

For example:

public int foo() {    
    Resource f = new Resource();
    DoSomething(f);
    f.Release();
}

How can one release resource if DoSomething throws an exception? We can't put try\catch blocks all over the code, can we?

Answer 1

Yes you can and should put try/catch/finally block around your code. In C# there is a shorthand "using" statement, but in Java you are stuck with:

public int foo() {
    Resource f = new Resource();
    try {
        DoSomething(f);
    }
    finally {
        f.Release();
    }
}

Answer 2

This question dates to 2008 and therefore pertains to Java 6. Since then Java 7 has been released, which contains a new feature for Automatic Resource Management. For a more recent question that is relevant to Java 7 see this question:

java techniques for automatic resource release? "prompt cleanup"?