Is it bad practice to return from within a try catch finally block?

c# try-catch try-catch-finally
lomaxx picture lomaxx · Jan 16, 2009 · Viewed 71.1k times · Source

So I came across some code this morning that looked like this:

try
{
    x = SomeThingDangerous();
    return x;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    throw new DangerousException(ex);
}
finally
{
    CleanUpDangerousStuff();
}

Now this code compiles fine and works as it should, but it just doesn't feel right to return from within a try block, especially if there's an associated finally.

My main issue is what happens if the finally throws an exception of it's own? You've got a returned variable but also an exception to deal with... so I'm interested to know what others think about returning from within a try block?

Answer

Mehrdad Afshari picture Mehrdad Afshari · Jan 16, 2009

No, it's not a bad practice. Putting return where it makes sense improves readability and maintainability and makes your code simpler to understand. You shouldn't care as finally block will get executed if a return statement is encountered.

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