Some simple code with error

Question

hello!
i need some help in this code. just cant find the error here.
thanks all!
the problem is in line of the function private linkerCount page(String link,String word). it something with return,
the error is :this method must return a result of type linkerCount/
private linkerCount page(String link,String word) {
    String str=null;
    try
    {//Open the URL for reading
        URL u = new URL(link);
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
           // buffer the input to increase performance
        InputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(u.openStream());
        // chain the InputStream to a Reader
        InputStreamReader theHTML = new InputStreamReader(in);
        str=StreamToString(theHTML);
        str = str.replaceAll("\\<.*?\\>", "");
        //System.out.println(countSubString(str,word)+link);
        int statistic=countSubString(str,word)/countWord(str);
        linkerCount s=new linkerCount(link,statistic);
        return s;
    catch (MalformedURLException e)
        System.err.println(e);
    catch (IOException e)
        System.err.println(e);
package test;
public class linkerCount {
    public linkerCount(String link, int count) {
        this.link=link;
        this.count=count;
    String link;
    int count;
}

Answer 1

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Thus, there are paths of execution that do not return a value of the type that the method is declared to return. That's what the compiler error message is telling you.If I'm not mistaken, can't you omit any return statement from within the try block and put one only at the end and it will still work fine? This would be because you only need the return statement at the end. It's not necessarily that there exist "paths" (plural) of execution that do not return a value but moreso that THE path of execution does not end with a return.
The compiler just is not smart enough to know that the area after the try/catch stuff is never going to be called. It can't know that because the format could have been different. For example
try
    stuff
catch (Exception)
more stuff
try
    still more stuff
catch (Exception)
}In code like the above, it is apparent that the grammar allows for situations where you could return at the end of a try but the function overall might still not be covered. Similar to
if(true)
    return 0;
if(true)
    return 1The function that contains only the above will always successfully return an integer, but the compiler doesn't know that.
I apologise if what you said said is contained within my explanation and I've just said the same thing in a different way without realising it. If so, hopefully it at least helps the original poster.