Question

I read code from one book and have this method:

public int getScore(String name) {
  try {
     //some code here
     return score;
  } catch (Exception e) {
     e.printStackTrace();
     return -1;
  }
}

Why this method in catch returns -1? Why not 5? Is that some convention?

Answer 1

You are the one choosing what you want to return as you are the only one who knows how you want to handle that returned value. I personally use -1 too when I want to detect an error, and I know a lot of people doing the same.