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The finally block is useful for cleaning up any resources allocated in the try block. Control is always passed to the finally block regardless of how the try block exits. This statement takes the following form:

try try-block finally finally-block


Contains the code segment expected to raise the exception.
Contains the exception handler and the cleanup code.


Whereas catch is used to handle exceptions that occur in a statement block, finally is used to guarantee a statement block of code executes regardless of how the preceding try block is exited.


In this example, there is one invalid conversion statement that causes an exception. When you run the program, you get a run-time error message, but the finally clause will still be executed and display the output.

// try-finally
using System;
public class TestTryFinally 
   public static void Main() 
      int i = 123;
      string s = "Some string";
      object o = s;

         // Invalid conversion; o contains a string not an int
         i = (int) o;   

         Console.Write("i = {0}", i);


The following exception occurs:


Although an exception was caught, the output statement included in the finally block will still be executed, that is:

i = 123

For more information on finally, see try-catch-finally.

See Also

C# Keywords | Compare to C++ | Exception Handling Statements | throw | try-catch | Throwing Exceptions | C. Grammar

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