JuliaLang/julia

disallow return in finally

Open

#57,875 opened on Mar 24, 2025

View on GitHub
 (20 comments) (9 reactions) (0 assignees)Julia (5,773 forks)batch import
breakinghelp wantedminor changeneeds pkgeval

Repository metrics

Stars
 (48,709 stars)
PR merge metrics
 (Avg merge 20d 6h) (157 merged PRs in 30d)

Description

This is unfortunate:

julia> function f(x)
           try
               error("test")
           finally
               return x
           end
       end

julia> f(4)
4

Brought up by @dalum on Slack. Would be good to simple make return in a finally block a syntax error. Seems unlikely to be widely used.

Contributor guide

Research direction
Inspect the parser and syntax error handling in Julia's compiler to understand where to add a validation for return statements in finally blocks.
Tech stack
None
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Bug
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
2
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-3 hours
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
GitJulia programming
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
70