Basic (try catch finally)

Question

Try catch and finally were thing i recently neglected to use unless my ide made me, but i was just reading on how to use them and I have a question about something i couldn't find an answer for:
objects you declare in try statements e.g.:
try{
BufferedReader br=...;
are only available in the scope of that try statement. Is this bad programming style or would "br" be automatically destroyed after the try statement is exited?

Answer 1

Well, define "dispose". If there's some method on the object that you need to call to clean that object up, you'll have to declare the variable outside the try block and then call it:
Something it;
try {
  it = SomethingFactory.createHeavyObject();
  it.doSomething(); // may throw Horse exception
  it.doSomethingElse();
} catch (Horse e) {
  e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
  it.releaseResources();
  it = null;  // only necessary if there will be a long time before "it" goes out of scope
              // and even then maybe not if releaseResources() took care of the heavy stuff
}On the other hand, you should never have to do this:
Something it;
try {
  it = new Something();
  it.doSomething(); // may throw Horse exception
} catch (Horse e) {
  e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
  it = null;
}Instead you could just do:
try {
  Something it = new Something();
  it.doSomething(); // may throw Horse exception
} catch (Horse e) {
  e.printStackTrace();