Understanding local variable initialization

Question

I'm reading J. Bloch's effective Java and now I'm in the section about intialization of local variables. Here is what he said:

Nearly every local variable declaration should contain an initializer. If you don’t yet have enough in formation to initialize a variable sensibly, you should postpone the declaration until you do. One exception to this rule concerns try-catch statements.

So, what about the if-else statement? We need to initialize a variable only if some condition is satisfied, and intialize it in another way if it is not, like

MyClass mc = null;
if(cond)
   mc = new MyClass();
else
   mc = new MyClass(1);
//use mc

Since, it's not mentioned by J. Bloch, is it considered as a bad programming technique and should be avoided?

Answer 1

In my opinion, the cleanest way should be:

final MyClass mc;
if (cond) {
   mc = new MyClass();
} else {
   mc = new MyClass(1);
}
//use mc

Because the final keyword will make sure, that the variable will always be initialized only once (for detailed explanation, look in your book at Item 15: Minimize mutability, page ~73).

And this is what you can't do in usual try-catch statements.

Also it's more effective and failsafe to always use curly braces.