Question

public void tokenize(){
    // attempt creating a reader for the input
    reader = this.newReader();

    while((line = reader.readLine())!=null){
        tokenizer = new StringTokenizer(line);
        while(tokenizer.hasMoreTokens()){
            toke = (tokenizer.nextToken().trim());
            this.tokenType(toke);
            //System.out.println(this.tokenType(toke));
        }   

    }
}

private BufferedReader newReader(){
    try {//attempt to read the file
        reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("Input.txt"));   
    }

    catch(FileNotFoundException e){
        System.out.println("File not found");
    }
    catch(IOException e){
        System.out.println("I/O Exception");
    }
    return reader;
}

I thought I had handled it within newReader() but it appears to be unreachable. Eclipse recommends a throws but I don’t understand what that’s doing, or if it’s even solving the problem?

Appreciate the help!

Answer 1

If you don’t know how to handle an IOException in this method, then it means that it’s not the responsibility of the method to handle it, and it should thus be thrown by the method.

The reader should be closed in this method, though, since this method opens it:

public void tokenize() throws IOException {
    BufferedReader reader = null;
    try {
        // attempt creating a reader for the input
        reader = this.newReader();
        ...
    }
    finally {
        if (reader != null) {
            try {
                reader.close();
            }
            catch (IOException e) {
                // nothing to do anymore: ignoring
            }
        }
    }
}

Also, note that unless your class is itself a kind of Reader wrapping another reader, and thus has a close method, the reader shouldn’t be an instance field. It should be a local variable as shown in my example.