On: Why Exceptions Suck

[AndyKelley]

I have never been able to use the finally block. I have yet to see an example where you would want to use it.

[mojuba → AndyKelley]

In languages with implicit construction/destruction facility, like C++, you'd probably live happily without the finally block. There are however situations in C++ when you want to create a class with ctor/dtor only to make sure some block is executed when going out of scope, no matter how. That dtor would be your finally block.

[AndyKelley → mojuba]

  ctor
  try {
    dostuff
  } catch 1 {
    blahblah
  } catch 2 {
    aoeuaoeuaoeu
  } finally {
    dtor
  }
  //why not put the dtor here and just leave off the finally block completely?

[gaius → mojuba]

Indeed - once I discovered __del__ in Python, I immediately started to do it that way instead.

[dhouston → AndyKelley]

any kind of cleanup -- especially releasing locks/other shared resources, and also closing sockets, files, memory, etc.