Issue with try-finally in Scala - scala

Question

I have following scala code:
val file = new FileReader("myfile.txt")
try {
// do operations on file
} finally {
file.close() // close the file
}
How do I handle FileNotFoundException thrown when I read the file? If I put that line inside try block, I am not able to access the file variable inside finally.

Answer 1

For scala 2.13:
you can just use Using to acquire some resource and release it automatically without error handling if it's an AutoClosable:
import java.io.FileReader
import scala.util.Using
val newStyle: Try[String] = Using(new FileReader("myfile.txt")) {
reader: FileReader =>
// do something with reader
"something"
}
newStyle
// will be
// Failure(java.io.FileNotFoundException: myfile.txt (No such file or directory))
// if file is not found or Success with some value it will not fall
scala 2.12:
You can wrap your reader creation by scala.util.Try and if it will fall on creation you will get Failure with FileNotFoundException inside.
import java.io.FileReader
import scala.util.Try
val oldStyle: Try[String] = Try{
val file = new FileReader("myfile.txt")
try {
// do operations on file
"something"
} finally {
file.close() // close the file
}
}
oldStyle
// will be
// Failure(java.io.FileNotFoundException: myfile.txt (No such file or directory))
// or Success with your result of file reading inside
I recommend not to use try ... catch blocks in scala code. It's not type safety for some cases and can lead to non-obvious results but for release some resource in old scala versions there is the only way to do it - using try-finally.