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The Java Tutorials

Trail: Essential Classes
Lesson: Exceptions
Section: Catching and Handling Ex ceptions

The catch Blocks

You associate exception handlers with a try block by providing one or mor e catch blocks directly after the try block. No code can be between the
end of the try block and the beginning of the rst catch block.

try {
} catch (ExceptionType name) {
} catch (ExceptionType name) {
}

Each catch block is an exception handler that handles the type of ex ception indicated b y its argument. The argument type, ExceptionType ,
declares the type of ex ception that the handler can handle and must be the name of a clas s that inherits from the Throwable class. The handler can
refer to the exception with name .

The catch block contains code that is ex ecuted if and when the ex ception handler is inv oked. The runtime system inv okes the exception handler
when the handler is the rst one in the call stack whose ExceptionType matches the type of the ex ception thrown. The system considers it a
match if the thrown object can legally be assigned t o the exception handler 's argument.

The following ar e two exception handlers for the writeList method:

try {
} catch (IndexOutOfBoundsException e) {
System.err.println("IndexOutOfBoundsException: " + e.getMessage());
} catch (IOException e) {
System.err.println("Caught IOException: " + e.getMessage());
}

Exception handlers can do mor e than just print err or messages or halt the pr ogram. They can do error recovery, prompt the user to make a decision,
or propagate the error up to a higher-level handler using chained ex ceptions, as described in the Chained Exceptions section.

Catching More Than One Type of Exception with One Exception Handler

In Java SE 7 and later, a single catch block can handle mor e than one type of ex ception. This feature can reduce code duplication and lessen the
temptation to catch an overly broad exception.

In the catch clause, specify the types of ex ceptions that block can handle, and separ ate each exception type with a v ertical bar (|):

catch (IOException|SQLException ex) {

logger.log(ex);
throw ex;
}

Note: If a catch block handles mor e than one exception type, then the catch parameter is implicitly final. In this example, the catch parameter
ex is final and therefore you cannot assign any v alues to it within the catch block.

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