This is in Java 6.

I've seen more than once that people create temp files, do something, then rename it to the output file. Everything is wrapped in a try-finally block, where the temp file is deleted in finally in case something goes wrong in between.

try {
    //do something with tempFile
    //do something with tempFile
    //do something with tempFile
    tempFile.renameTo(outputFile);
}
finally {
    if (tempFile.exists())
        tempFile.delete()
}

I was wondering what are the benefits of doing that instead of doing something to the output file directly and delete it in case of exceptions.

try {
    //do something with outputFile
    //do something with outputFile
    //do something with outputFile
}
catch (Exception e) {
    if (outputFile.exists())
        outputFile.delete();
}

My guess is that deleting temp files in finally benefits me when the try block can throw many kinds of exceptions. Is my guess right? What else?