I’ve been working on a console based Inventory program as part of my course, and now I need to store and parse the data in files. So, I have stored all of my data in csv files and have a dedicated ‘file’ with a generic loadFile() method.
If the Inventory or config file cannot be found, it doesn’t really make sense for the program to continue as everything else depends on them.
As such, I’m simply catching the file within the loadFile() method and printing a statement to the user and then using System.exit() to close.
Is this good practice? Is there a more elegant way of terminating the program after the correct error message has been printed?
No.
The purpose of exceptions is to indicate exceptional conditions. Since your program won’t work without its input files,
System.exit()is exactly the right thing to do.