try-with-resources and null resource

[Gernot Neppert]

2011/1/28 Stephen Colebourne <scolebourne at joda.org>:
>
> Nulls are everywhere, and using null as a return type to indicate that
> something isn't present (like a resource) is very widespread.
>

I don't think anybody in this discussion would dispute your
doubtlessly correct observation.
Of course nulls are prevalent throughout Java code, and they serve a
good purpose!

_But_: We're not talking about property getters returning null values here.

We're talking about the expressions that initialize resources, a.k.a
expressions that modify a resource so that it ends up being in a
'closeable' state.
This is a very specific subset of expressions, for which the
presupposition that it never returns null is IMHO very reasonable.