Should I use System.exit(1) when catching an application-stopping Exception?

Question

Say I have the following code:

try {
    //Do something with File
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
    outputInfo("Error in IO Redirection", true);
    e.printStackTrace();
    System.exit(1);
}

My program exits right after this catch location, is a single thread (one main method) program and should not expect to recover from such an exception.

Should I really be using System.exit(1); ?

Answer 1

If you expect someone else to run your program, and they rely on the process status code to know if your program has succeeded or failed, then you should use System.exit(1);

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/System.html#exit%28int%29

Terminates the currently running Java Virtual Machine. The argument serves as a status code; by convention, a nonzero status code indicates abnormal termination.

Answer 2

One of the reasons to use a non zero exit code on failure of an application is that they can be used in batch files. If your application is a console application always use proper exit code. You don't know how it will be used in future.