Java Syntax from the Ground Up - Java in a Nutshell - page 64

introduce the syntax now. The following example shows how to open a file using the
FileInputStream class (which results in an object which will require cleanup):
try ( InputStream is = new FileInputStream ( "/Users/ben/details.txt" )) {
// ... process the file
}
This new form of try takes parameters that are all objects that require cleanup. 2
These objects are scoped to this try block, and are then cleaned up automatically no
matter how this block is exited. The developer does not need to write any catch or
finally blocks—the Java compiler automatically inserts correct cleanup code.
All new code that deals with resources should be written in the TWR style—it is
considerably less error prone than manually writing catch blocks, and does not suf‐
fer from the problems that plague techniques such as finalization (see “Finalization”
on page 206 for details).
The assert Statement
An assert statement is an attempt to provide a capability to verify design assump‐
tions in Java code. An assertion consists of the assert keyword followed by a
boolean expression that the programmer believes should always evaluate to true . By
default, assertions are not enabled, and the assert statement does not actually do
anything.
It is possible to enable assertions as a debugging tool, however; when this is done,
the assert statement evaluates the expression. If it is indeed true , assert does
nothing. On the other hand, if the expression evaluates to false , the assertion fails,
and the assert statement throws a java.lang.AssertionError .
Outside of the core JDK libraries, the assert statement is
extremely rarely used. It turns out to be too inflexible for test‐
ing most applications and is not often used by ordinary devel‐
opers, except sometimes for field-debugging complex multi‐
threaded applications.
The assert statement may include an optional second expression, separated from
the first by a colon. When assertions are enabled and the first expression evaluates
to false , the value of the second expression is taken as an error code or error mes‐
sage and is passed to the AssertionError() constructor. The full syntax of the
statement is:
assert assertion ;
or:
assert assertion : errorcode ;
2 Technically, they must all implement the AutoCloseable interface.