Why finally block may not execute when exception is thrown?

问题

For a long time I thought that it allows me to free up all the resources in the finally block and I thought that if an exception happens in the try block, then the resources will still be free up in the finally block. But that seems not to be the case.

I have the following piece of code:

using System;

public sealed class Program
{

    public static void Main()
    {
        try {
            int zero = 0;
            int i = 1/zero;
        } finally {
            Console.WriteLine("divide by zero"); //the line is never called
        }
    }
}

I never reach the line which prints to the console. That means that I will not be able to free up resource in finally block in this case on the exception being thrown inside the try block.

So, I believe there are two things: either I am missing something or the try + finally combination has no use cases in the C#. The second statement makes sense, because I will get the same functionality as is produced by the above code with the code below:

using System;

public sealed class Program
{

    public static void Main()
    {
            int zero = 0;
            int i = 1/zero;

            Console.WriteLine("divide by zero"); //the line is never called
    }
}

But I am afraid that I might be missing something here. So, could someone confirm that the combination is useless or prove that it is not, please?

UPDATE

After the comment which is able to call the finally block in its fiddle, I checked once more in the VS Code, and still I see no output.

回答1:

You're assumptions are incorrect (sometimes) https://dotnetfiddle.net/hjqmOS

try-finally (C# Reference)

By using a finally block, you can clean up any resources that are allocated in a try block, and you can run code even if an exception occurs in the try block. Typically, the statements of a finally block run when control leaves a try statement. The transfer of control can occur as a result of normal execution, of execution of a break, continue, goto, or return statement, or of propagation of an exception out of the try statement.

There are cases when it doesn't run though

Within a handled exception, the associated finally block is guaranteed to be run. However, if the exception is unhandled, execution of the finally block is dependent on how the exception unwind operation is triggered. That, in turn, is dependent on how your computer is set up.

Here is the important part

Usually, when an unhandled exception ends an application, whether or not the finally block is run is not important. However, if you have statements in a finally block that must be run even in that situation, one solution is to add a catch block to the try-finally statement. Alternatively, you can catch the exception that might be thrown in the try block of a try-finally statement higher up the call stack.

回答2:

try/catch/finally has nothing to do with freeing up resources. This is strictly application flow and error handling construct. You live in the managed code and garbage collector frees up resources. This construct does the following

try
{
    int zero = 0;
    int i = 1/zero;
}
catch (DividedByZeroException ex)
{
    Console.WriteLine(Exception handled);
    throw; // propagate ex to caller
}
finally
{
    Console.WriteLine("Method ended execution"); // called with or without exception
}

回答3:

I believe this is because you have VS to break on unhandled errors and thus VS steps in displaying the exception. If you compile it and run it manually on the command line I believe you will see "divide by zero". Also, instead of changing your VS settings, you can 'handle' the error and then should see the behavior you expect.

Example:

using System;

public sealed class Program
{

public static void Main()
{
    try
    {
        int zero = 0;
        int i = 1 / zero;
    }
    catch
    {

    }
    finally
    {
        Console.WriteLine("divide by zero"); 
    }
}
}

回答4:

I would like to share the following excerpt from the C# via CLR book, which made it clear for me, why finally block may not be called.

If an exception is thrown by code executing within the try block (or any method called from within the try block), the CLR starts searching for catch blocks whose catch type is the same type as or a base type of the thrown exception. If none of the catch types matches the exception, the CLR continues searching up the call stack looking for a catch type that matches the exception. If after reaching the top of the call stack, no catch block is found with a matching catch type, an unhandled exception occurs.

Once the CLR locates a catch block with a matching catch type, it executes the code in all inner finally blocks, starting from within the try block whose code threw the exception and stopping with the catch block that matched the exception. Note that any finally block associated with the catch block that matched the exception is not executed yet. The code in this finally block won’t execute until after the code in the handling catch block has executed.

After all the code in the inner finally blocks has executed, the code in the handling catch block executes.

So, that means in case of any unhandled exception the finally block is not going to be called.

来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60158238/why-finally-block-may-not-execute-when-exception-is-thrown

标签

exception

try-catch

finally

try-finally