Exceptions - Illustrated C# 2005 - page 273

The finally Block
If a program's flow of control enters a try statement that has a finally block, the finally block
is always executed. The flow of control is illustrated in Figure 11-5.

If no exception occurs inside the try block, then at the end of the try block, control goes
to the finally block—skipping over any catch clauses.

￿

If an exception occurs inside the try block, then any appropriate catch clauses in the
catch clauses section are executed, followed by the finally block.

￿

Figure 11-5. Execution of the finally block

Even if a try block has a return statement, the finally block will still always be executed
before returning to the calling code. For example, in the following code, there is a return state-
ment in the middle of the try block that is executed under certain conditions. This does not
allow it to bypass the finally statement.

try
{
if (inVal < 10) {
Console.Write("First Branch - ");
return;
}
else
Console.Write("Second Branch - ");
}
finally
{ Console.WriteLine("In finally statement"); }

This code produces the following output when variable inVal has the value 5 .

First Branch - In finally statement