throwing exceptions on instantiation

The makeGuest is working fine, probably because the data is fine.  If the 
constructor of Guest throws a DataException, though, I wouldn't want 
makeGuest to return a new Guest!  I'm not quite sure what it should do, 
if not that, though...

Should I try makeGuest first?  Would it make sense to have a tryMakeGuest
() method?



thufir@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
thufir@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
thufir@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 cat src/a00720398/util/
FileUtil.java
/**
 * FileUtil.java
 */

package a00720398.util;

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import a00720398.data.*;

public abstract class FileUtil {

        public static Guest makeGuest(List<String> guestData)throws 
DataException{
                try{
                        String[] data = guestData.toArray(new String
[guestData.size()]);
                        Guest guest = new Guest(data);
                        return guest;
                } catch (DataException e) {
                        e.printStackTrace();
                }
                return new Guest();
        }

        public static List<Guest> loadGuests(){
                List<Guest> guests = new ArrayList<Guest>();


          File file = new File("Guests.txt");

                try {
                        Scanner scanner = new Scanner(file);
                        while (scanner.hasNextLine()) {
                                List<String> guestData = new 
ArrayList<String>();
                                String line = scanner.nextLine();
                                Scanner lineScanner = new Scanner(line);
                                lineScanner.useDelimiter("\t");
                                while (lineScanner.hasNext()) {
                                        String part = lineScanner.next();
                                        guestData.add(part);
                                        if (!lineScanner.hasNext()) {
                                                try{
                                                        Guest guest = 
makeGuest(guestData);
                                                        guests.add(guest);
                                                } catch (DataException e){
                                                        e.printStackTrace
();
                                                }
                                        }
                                }
                        }
                }catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
                        e.printStackTrace();
                }
                return guests;
        }



}
thufir@[EMAIL PROTECTED]