An application’s memory footprint grows over time and may eventually cause the application to crash. There are many things that lead to a slow memory burn. One of these is failure to close file handles and SQL database connections.

 File file = new File(...);try {FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream( file );..} catch(IOException ioe) {ioe.printStackTrace();}try {Connection conn = ....;Statement ps = conn.prepareStatement();..ResultSet rs = ps.executeQuery();..} catch(SQLException sqle) {sqle.printStackTrace();}

In most cases, it’s simple to add code to close these:

 File file = new File(...);try {FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream( file );..fis.close();} catch(IOException ioe) {ioe.printStackTrace();}try {Connection conn = ....;Statement ps = conn.prepareStatement();..ResultSet rs = ps.executeQuery();..rs.close();ps.close();conn.close();} catch(SQLException sqle) {sqle.printStackTrace();}

When an exception is thrown, however, the connections will not close.Closing is effective inside the catch block, but there may be multiple catch blocks, which would mean a lot of repeated code.

To solve this problem, use the finally keyword. After a block is executed, such as a for loop, a while loop, or a try-catch, any statement inside the finally { } block will be executed.

 try {} catch(SomeException se) {se.printStackTrace();} finally {// this is executed ALWAYS}

Unfortunately, the finally { } block doesn’t share the same scope as the preceding block, so the code gets more complex. For example:

 File file = new File(...);FileInputStream fis = null;try {fis = new FileInputStream( file );..} catch(IOException ioe) {ioe.printStackTrace();} finally {if(fis != null) {fis.close();}}Connection conn = null;Statement ps = null;ResultSet rs = null;try {conn = ....;ps = conn.prepareStatement();..rs = ps.executeQuery();..} catch(SQLException sqle) {sqle.printStackTrace();} finally {if(rs != null) {rs.close();}if(ps != null) {ps.close();}if(conn != null) {conn.close();}}

The code is now longer and more complex, yet it is also stronger and will not leave file handles and SQL connections hanging around.