Java return vs finally – Vidvaan

Even though return statement present in try or catch blocks first finally will be executed and after that only return statement will be considered. i.e. finally block dominates the return statement

Example – return vs finally

package com.vidvaan.corejava.exception09.returnVsFinally;

//return vs finally
public class ReturnVsFinallyDemo {

	public static void main(String[] args) {

		System.out.println("main begin");
		try {
			System.out.println("try block : Risky code");
			return;
		} catch (NullPointerException e) {
			System.out.println("catch-block : Handling NullPointerException");
		} finally {
			// finally block still executes before return of try block
			System.out.println("finally block :  Always executes");

		}
		System.out.println("main end");
	}
}

package com.vidvaan.corejava.exception09.returnVsFinally;

//return vs finally

public class ReturnVsFinallyDemo {

public static void main(String[] args) {

System.out.println("main begin");

try {

System.out.println("try block : Risky code");

return;

} catch (NullPointerException e) {

System.out.println("catch-block : Handling NullPointerException");

} finally {

// finally block still executes before return of try block

System.out.println("finally block : Always executes");

}

System.out.println("main end");

}

Output :

main begin
try block : Risky code
finally block : Always executes

In the above example, even there is a ‘return’ statement in the try block we could see that finally block got executed.

Generally when ever ‘return’ statement executes then no other statement will execute in a method. But in the case of finally, finally block executed first and then return.

If return statement present inside try, catch, finally then finally block return statement will be considered.