What is the purpose of finally block in C#?

C# provides an extensive exception handling mechanism using try..catch blocks. While executing a block of code inside try block, if there are any error occurrences then the appropriate catch block will be triggered based on the order in which it appears.

For example, your code might use unmanaged resources. If there is any exception occurrence and your program is going to terminate then before terminating it is essential to release all unmanaged resources. Where do you do it? You can write such critical section of code inside finally block. Code inside finally block will be executed at all times irrespective of exceptions. This is demonstrated using the example shown below:

public class sampleClass {
public static void Main() {
StreamReader sampleReader = new StreamReader(“sample.txt”);
try {
sampleReader = new StreamReader(“sample.txt”);
string sampleStr;
while ((sampleStr = sampleReader.ReadLine()) != null) {
Console.WriteLine(sampleStr);
}
}
catch(Exception exp) {
Console.WriteLine(“Exception Occurred:”+exp);
}
finally {
if (sampleReader != null) {
sampleReader.Close();
}
}
}
}

In the above example, you read the contents of file “sample.txt” inside try block. If there are any error occurrences like OutofMemoryException then catch block will execute. In normal cases, the program will terminate. Since you have included finally block, the code inside finally block will execute even if an exception is caught and therefore the sampleReader will get closed irrespective of exception occurrences.

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