unnecessary code in Oracle example?

From:

Jim Janney <jjanney@shell.xmission.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Wed, 09 Oct 2013 10:38:09 -0600

Message-ID:

<ydnr4bujt72.fsf@shell.xmission.com>

I'm reading up on Java 7's try-with-resource statement and looking at
the tutorial at

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/exceptions/tryResourceClose.html

which includes the following code:

static String readFirstLineFromFileWithFinallyBlock(String path)
                                                   throws IOException {
   BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(path));
   try {
       return br.readLine();
   } finally {
       if (br != null) br.close();
   }
}

As a matter of habit, I always write that pattern as

static String readFirstLineFromFileWithFinallyBlock(String path)
                                                    throws IOException {
   BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(path));
   try {
       return br.readLine();
   } finally {
       br.close();
   }
}

on the theory that if you reach that point br can never be null, so the
test is both redundant and confusing. On the other hand, I might be
wrong. Is there a reason to test for null in the finally block?

--
Jim Janney