Return in Finally

[NeedHelp]

Is there a way to return a value in the finally section of a Try/Catch? I need a value populated if that occurs but can't seem to find a way to do it.

[hoser2001]

I don't see why you would have any more difficult of a time doing that in the finally section of the try/catch than in any other function. Could you give an example of what you're trying to do?

[brackett]

You can't return out of a finally statement because of the way the stack is being unwound. The Finally block will run regardless of an exception or not, and isn't really practical to return out of anyway...

If you give an example of what you're trying to do, perhaps I could give you more info?

[hoser2001]

I never really thought about that before, it is known to me that the finally block would fire no matter what, however I didnt' know that you couldn't return from there.... Thanks for the explanation brackett. Do you have any good resources wehre I could read up on how 'stacks' work?

[brackett]

The concept of a Stack is fairly simple. Push adds to the top, Pop takes off the top. It's basically a LIFO (Last In, First Out) queue (an actual Queue would be FIFO - First In, First Out; Push adds to the bottom, Pop takes off the top.).

For the stack concept applied to executing a program, typically termed a call stack, Wikipedia has a decent article. For specifics of the CLR execution stack, and the way a finally block is attached to it (as well as a lot more), Joe Duffy's Professional .NET Framework 2.0 is a pretty good, easy reading intro.