Как работали с ресурсами до появления try-with-resources?

Before the introduction of the try-with-resources statement in Java (prior to Java 7), resource management (such as streams, files, connections) was handled manually using a try-finally block.

The resource was opened before the try block, and in the finally block, it was closed to prevent resource leaks even if exceptions occurred.

Example:

BufferedReader reader = null;
try {
    reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("file.txt"));
    String line = reader.readLine();
    System.out.println(line);
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
    if (reader != null) {
        try {
            reader.close();
        } catch (IOException ex) {
            ex.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

This approach was more verbose and prone to errors if the resource was not closed or if exceptions during closing were not handled properly.