This kind of construct has been seen in several Modena testcases and
I consider it a bug in those testcases, and in general. I wished that
javac would detect it and print out an error or some kind of warning.

class b {
    public static int f() {
        try {
                return 5; /* <---- 5 is NEVER returned! */
        }
        finally {
                return 6;
        }
    }
}

Without a return expression there appears to be no harm, or mis-understanding
as to what is happening, but with a return expression the behavior is
very very mis-leading... Consider it being even worse:

class b {
    public static int f() {
      try {
        try {
                return 5; /* <---- 5 is NEVER returned! */
        }
        finally {
                return 6;
        }
      }
      finally {
                return 7;
      }
    }
}

Now it never returns 5 or 6, yet those statements appear to be executed.

Perhaps a

warning: return expression lost due to abrupt transfer of finally clause

???

-kto

kelly.ohair@Eng 1997-10-24