On throwing InterruptedException

[forax at univ-mlv.fr]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Alan Bateman" <alan.bateman at oracle.com>
> To: "Remi Forax" <forax at univ-mlv.fr>, "Pavel Rappo" <pavel.rappo at gmail.com>
> Cc: "core-libs-dev" <core-libs-dev at openjdk.org>
> Sent: Thursday, November 6, 2025 10:37:13 AM
> Subject: Re: On throwing InterruptedException

> On 05/11/2025 14:00, Remi Forax wrote:
>> :
>>
>> If a thread is interrupted, it should stop ASAP.
>> So if you catch InterruptedException and rethrow a new exception, this should be
>> okay (as Alan said).
> Rethrowing the InterruptedException is okay. Throwing a new exception
> that is not an InterruptedException is okay too but only after restoring
> the interrupted status, otherwise the thread might block again is some
> catch block as it unwinds.

and I disagree here :)

Let's take a step back, in Java code
1/ people are writing many catch blocks that they should not and usually the code in the catch block is not exercised enough so it is a little brittle. 
2/ the normal behavior is to either get an InterruptedException or to have the flag "interrupted" set, but not both.

If you throw an exception AND set the flag, usually the code in a catch block will behave weirdly because the catch code has not be written with that corner case in mind.

Throwing an unrecoverable error usually avoid that problem (and yes, i'm aware it may clash with the way old executors work but virtual threads are our saviors).

> 
> -Alan

regards,
Rémi