Question

In the program I’m currently writing, I find myself doing the following a lot…

Map<String,List<String>> network = loadSerializedObj(file); // null if failed
if(network != null) {
    anonNet = util.anonymize(newNet);
} else {
    // Some sort of error handling.
    System.out.println("Some sort of error message. Exiting...");
    System.exit(0);        
}

Is there a more succinct way of handling the event that loading the serialized object from file doesn’t work and the method returns null? Any tips at all are welcome. Anywhere I can make this more elegant?

Answer 1

you should make loadSerializedObj throw an exception instead of return null. you can return null when you don’t have anything to return. when something breaks, you should throw an exception.