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How to use finally blocks

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When an exception occurs, execution stops and control is given to the appropriate exception handler. This often means that lines of code you expect to be executed are bypassed. Some resource cleanup, such as closing a file, needs to be done even if an exception is thrown. To do this, you can use a finally block. A finally block always executes, regardless of whether an exception is thrown.

The following code example uses a try/catch block to catch an ArgumentOutOfRangeException. The Main method creates two arrays and attempts to copy one to the other. The action generates an ArgumentOutOfRangeException because length is specified as -1, and the error is written to the console. The finally block executes regardless of the outcome of the copy action.

using namespace System;

ref class ArgumentOutOfRangeExample
{
public:
    static void Main()
    {
        array<int>^ array1 = {0, 0};
        array<int>^ array2 = {0, 0};

        try
        {
            Array::Copy(array1, array2, -1);
        }
        catch (ArgumentOutOfRangeException^ e)
        {
            Console::WriteLine("Error: {0}", e);
            throw;
        }
        finally
        {
            Console::WriteLine("This statement is always executed.");
        }
    }
};

int main()
{
    ArgumentOutOfRangeExample::Main();
}

class ArgumentOutOfRangeExample
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        int[] array1 = {0, 0};
        int[] array2 = {0, 0};

        try
        {
            Array.Copy(array1, array2, -1);
        }
        catch (ArgumentOutOfRangeException e)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}", e);
            throw;
        }
        finally
        {
            Console.WriteLine("This statement is always executed.");
        }
    }
}

Class ArgumentOutOfRangeExample
    Public Shared Sub Main()
        Dim array1() As Integer = {0, 0}
        Dim array2() As Integer = {0, 0}

        Try
            Array.Copy(array1, array2, -1)
        Catch e As ArgumentOutOfRangeException
            Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}", e)
            Throw
        Finally
            Console.WriteLine("This statement is always executed.")
        End Try
    End Sub
End Class

See also