Return Inside Finally Block

The code has a return statement inside a finally block, which will cause any thrown exception in the try block to be discarded.


Demonstrations

The following examples help to illustrate the nature of this weakness and describe methods or techniques which can be used to mitigate the risk.

Note that the examples here are by no means exhaustive and any given weakness may have many subtle varieties, each of which may require different detection methods or runtime controls.

Example One

In the following code excerpt, the IllegalArgumentException will never be delivered to the caller. The finally block will cause the exception to be discarded.

try {
  ...
  throw IllegalArgumentException();
}
finally {
  return r;
}

See Also

Comprehensive Categorization: Insufficient Control Flow Management

Weaknesses in this category are related to insufficient control flow management.

SEI CERT Oracle Secure Coding Standard for Java - Guidelines 07. Exceptional Behavior (ERR)

Weaknesses in this category are related to the rules and recommendations in the Exceptional Behavior (ERR) section of the SEI CERT Oracle Secure Coding Standard for Java.

SFP Secondary Cluster: Incorrect Exception Behavior

This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Incorrect Exception Behavior cluster (SFP6).

Comprehensive CWE Dictionary

This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.

Weaknesses Introduced During Implementation

This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during implementation.

Weakness Base Elements

This view (slice) displays only weakness base elements.


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