System exit method in Java

Question

How does System.exit() method affect a program?

public class TestExit
{      
    public static void main(String[] args)
    { 
        System.out.println("hello world");

        System.exit(0);
    }      
}

Is it necessary to include this method in my code? Please explain.

Answer 1

System.exit() is a method of System class and is used to execute the shutdown hooks before the program quits. This method is generally used to shut down the larger programs where all parts of the program are not aware of each other. In such cases, System.exit() is called in order to take care of necessary shutdown tasks like closing file, closing connection, freeing resources etc.

One thing I would like to mention, this method never returns normally i.e the method won't return anything, once a thread goes there, it won't come back.

Also, if you have code which contains the non-daemon threads, you need to use System.exit() to shut down all non-daemon threads and release other resources. If there are no other non-daemon threads, returning from main will automatically shut down the JVM and will call the shutdown hooks.