Best practice for implementing in Ada (2005 or 2012) an equivalent of the java finalize block
As Adrien mentions in the comment, Finalize
is more analogous to a destructor.
To get something approximating an exception/final sequence you can do something along these lines (WARNING, not compiled, just typed--we'll work out any errors together :-) See also the Exceptions section of the Ada RM.
with Ada.Exceptions; use Ada.Exceptions;
procedure Do_Something is
-- Variables and what-not...
-- In case you have an exception and want to reraise it after you've done
-- the 'final' processing.
Exception_Caught : Exception_Occurrence := Null_Occurrence;
begin
-- You can have some statements, like initializations, here that will not
-- raise exceptions. But you don't have to, it can all just go in the
-- following block. However you want to do it...
declare
-- If you need to declare some entities local to a block, put those here.
-- If not, just omit this declare section. Be aware, though, that if
-- you initialize something in here and it raises an exception, the
-- block's exception handler will not catch it. Such an exception will
-- propagate out of the whole procedure (unless it has an outermost
-- exception handler) because you're _not_ in the block's scope yet.
begin
-- Main processing that might raise an exception
...
exception
when E : others =>
-- Handle any exception that's raised. If there are specific
-- exceptions that can be raised, they should be explicitly
-- handled prior to this catch-all 'others' one.
-- Save the exception occurrence, i.e. make a copy of it that can
-- be reraised in the 'Final' section if needed. (If you want to
-- reraise for a specific exception, do this in those handlers as
-- well.
Save_Occurrence(Exception_Caught, E);
end;
-- Final processing. Everything from here to the end of the procedure is
-- executed regardless of whether an exception was raised in the above
-- block. By it including an others handler, it ensured that no exception
-- will propagate out of this procedure without hitting this 'Final' code.
-- If an exception was raised and needs to be propagated:
if Exception_Caught /= Null_Occurrence then
Reraise_Exception(Exception_Caught);
end if;
end Do_Something;
I believe this code will do what you ask; it successfully prints out 42
with the present raise
or with return
. It's an implementation of T.E.D's suggestion.
Tested with GCC 4.5.0 on Mac OS X, Darwin 10.6.0.
with Ada.Finalization;
package Finally is
-- Calls Callee on deletion.
type Caller (Callee : not null access procedure)
is new Ada.Finalization.Limited_Controlled with private;
private
type Caller (Callee : not null access procedure)
is new Ada.Finalization.Limited_Controlled with null record;
procedure Finalize (Object : in out Caller);
end Finally;
package body Finally is
procedure Finalize (Object : in out Caller)
is
begin
Object.Callee.all;
end Finalize;
end Finally;
with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO;
with Finally;
procedure Finally_Demo is
begin
declare
X : Integer := 21;
-- The cleanup procedure, to be executed when this block is left
procedure F
is
begin
Put_Line ("X is " & Integer'Image (X));
end F;
-- The controlled object, whose deletion will execute F
F_Caller : Finally.Caller (F'Access);
begin
X := 42;
raise Constraint_Error;
end;
end Finally_Demo;
Assuming you have understood the difference between ada.finalization and a finalize block in java, i would do something similar to the following, which should have the same effect.
procedure x is
begin
-- some code
begin
-- more code (your try)
exception
-- handle exception if necessary (caught exception)
end;
-- yet more code which is executed regardless of any exception handling.
end x;