Dealing with IndexOutOfBoundsExceptions

[MrDave]

I'm just wondering what the best method is for dealing with IndexOutOfBoundsExceptions at the moment I use something like this:

public Person getPersonAtIndex(int index){
        try{
            return this.m_people.elementAt(index);
        }catch(IndexOutOfBoundsException e){
            return null;
        }
    }

But returning null doesn't really seem like the best solution to me, is there a better way of dealing with this.

[Norm]

Have the method throw the exception itself and pass it to where the code that gen'ed the bad index can handle it.

[m00nchile]

Just like Norm said, this way you don't have to worry about what the returned null means, since it could be a valid value. This works just fine:

public Person getPersonAtIndex(int index) throws IndexOutOfBoundsException {
        if(index >= m_people.size())
            throw new IndexOutOfBoundsException();      
        return this.m_people.elementAt(index);
    }

Then you catch the exception in your driver class.

[Norm]

public Person getPersonAtIndex(int index) throws IndexOutOfBoundsException {
        return this.m_people.elementAt(index);
}

This would also work.
The other gives you a place to put some debug code before the exception is thrown.

[Zack]

Just a quick note; if using m00nchile's method, you may also want to check if index < 0. The likelihood is that you will never get a call like getPersonAtIndex(-1) but it could happen.