Try Pattern

• defensive programming technique where you attempt an operation that might fail and report success/failure using a return value (usually true or false), rather than relying on exceptions

• useful for expected, frequent errors like parsing user input or looking up values in collections.

• Common in C# but not java

  • will need to build helper methods

Impl Java

• Use of optional

  public static Optional<Integer> tryParseInt(String s) {
    try {
         return Optional.of(Integer.parseInt(s));
    } catch (NumberFormatException e) {
        return Optional.empty();
    }
  }

    // Usage:
    Optional<Integer> maybeInt = tryParseInt("123");
    maybeInt.ifPresentOrElse(
            i -> System.out.println("Parsed: " + i),
            () -> System.out.println("Invalid input")
    );

• Use boolean

public class TryParseUtil {
    public static boolean tryParseInt(String s, AtomicInteger result) {
        try {
            result.set(Integer.parseInt(s));
            return true;
        } catch (NumberFormatException e) {
            result.set(0); // or leave it unchanged if you prefer
            return false;
        }
    }
}

// Usage:
AtomicInteger result = new AtomicInteger();
if (TryParseUtil.tryParseInt("123", result)) {
    System.out.println("Parsed: " + result.get());
} else {
    System.out.println("Invalid input");
}