try-catch-finally with return after it

Question

I know how try, catch & finally work (for most part), but I have one thing I was wondering: what happens with a return statement after a try-catch-finally, while we already had a return in the try (or catch)?

For example:

public boolean someMethod(){     boolean finished = false;     try{         // do something         return true;     }     catch(someException e){         // do something     }     finally{         // do something     }     return finished; } 

Let's say nothing went wrong in the try, so we returned true. Then we will go to the finally where we do something like closing a connection, and then?

Will the method stop after we did some stuff in the finally (so the method returned true in the try), or will the method continue after the finally again, resulting in returning finished (which is false)?

Thanks in advance for the responses.

Answer 1

The fact that the finally block is executed does not make the program forget you returned. If everything goes well, the code after the finally block won't be executed.

Here is an example that makes it clear:

public class Main {      public static void main(String[] args) {         System.out.println("Normal: " + testNormal());         System.out.println("Exception: " + testException());     }      public static int testNormal() {         try {             // no exception             return 0;         } catch (Exception e) {             System.out.println("[normal] Exception caught");         } finally {             System.out.println("[normal] Finally");         }         System.out.println("[normal] Rest of code");         return -1;     }      public static int testException() {         try {             throw new Exception();         } catch (Exception e) {             System.out.println("[except] Exception caught");         } finally {             System.out.println("[except] Finally");         }         System.out.println("[except] Rest of code");         return -1;     }  } 

Output:

[normal] Finally Normal: 0 [except] Exception caught [except] Finally [except] Rest of code Exception: -1 

Answer 2

If all goes well, return inside the try is executed after executing the finally block.

If something goes wrong inside try, exception is caught and executed and then finally block is executed and then the return after that is executed.