Try-catch-finally order of execution appears to be random [duplicate]

Answer 1

printStackTrace() outputs to standard error. System.out.println("common") outputs to standard output. Both of them are routed to the same console, but the order in which they appear on that console is not necessarily the order in which they were executed.

If you write to the same stream in both catch block and finally block (for example, try System.err.println("common")), you'll see that the catch block is always executed before the finally block when an exception is caught.

Answer 2

Exception's printstacktrace() method source code(defined in Throwable class)

public void printStackTrace() {
        printStackTrace(System.err);
    }

The formatting of output occurs because your are using standard output stream through System.out.printlnand exception occurs System.err stream

Try having a variable which will check exceptions and print in same error console if exception occurs :-

boolean isException = false;
try {
        int a=4;
        int b=0;
        int c=a/b;
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
       isException = true
       ex.printStackTrace();
    }
    finally {
       if(isException){
        System.err.println("common");
       }else{
        System.out.println("common");
       }
  }