Re: (File)OutputStreams and their usage

From:

Leonard Milcin <leonard@milcin.dont-spam.pl>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Fri, 16 May 2008 13:23:21 +0200

Message-ID:

<482d6ea9$1@news.home.net.pl>

Philipp wrote:

Dear all,

Is this (see code) the correct way of handling a FileOutputStream?
Specific question are in the code. Thanks for your answers. Philipp

public void load(File file){
  OutputStream os;
  try {
    os = new FileOutputStream(file);
  } catch (Exception e) {
    logger.log("Could not open file output stream", e);
    // can os be non-null here?
    // should I put a close() here?
    return;
  }

  try {
    load(os); // call of another load method with OutputStream
  } catch (Exception e) {
    logger.log("Exception while loading from file.", e);
    return; // is this return of any interest?
  } finally {
    if(os != null){
      try {
        os.close();
      } catch (Exception e) {
        // exception while closing, what can we do?
      }
    }
  }
}

Well, you're converting from exceptions to error codes.
load() can silently fail and it's up to the caller to check if
it has loaded anything. I would propagate exceptions or convert them to
another type of exception.

--
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
-- Leonardo da Vinci