Exceptions
Definition
The Three Kinds of Exceptions
Checked Exception
These are exceptional conditions that a well-written application should anticipate and recover from. For example, suppose an application prompts a user for an input file name, then opens the file by passing the name to the constructor for java.io.FileReader. Normally, the user provides the name of an existing, readable file, so the construction of the FileReader object succeeds, and the execution of the application proceeds normally. But sometimes the user supplies the name of a nonexistent file, and the constructor throws java.io.FileNotFoundException. A well-written program will catch this exception and notify the user of the mistake, possibly prompting for a corrected file name.
Error
These are exceptional conditions that are external to the application, and that the application usually cannot anticipate or recover from. For example, suppose that an application successfully opens a file for input, but is unable to read the file because of a hardware or system malfunction. The unsuccessful read will throw java.io.IOError. An application might choose to catch this exception, in order to notify the user of the problem — but it also might make sense for the program to print a stack trace and exit.
Runtime Exception
These are exceptional conditions that are internal to the application, and that the application usually cannot anticipate or recover from. These usually indicate programming bugs, such as logic errors or improper use of an API. For example, consider the application described previously that passes a file name to the constructor for FileReader. If a logic error causes a null to be passed to the constructor, the constructor will throw NullPointerException. The application can catch this exception, but it probably makes more sense to eliminate the bug that caused the exception to occur.
{% hint style="info" %} Errors and runtime exceptions are collectively known as unchecked exceptions. {% endhint %}
Class Error
An Error is a subclass of Throwable that indicates serious problems that a reasonable application should not try to catch. Most such errors are abnormal conditions.
A method is not required to declare in its throws clause any subclasses of Error that might be thrown during the execution of the method but not caught, since these errors are abnormal conditions that should never occur. That is, Error and its subclasses are regarded as unchecked exceptions for the purposes of compile-time checking of exceptions
Class Exception
The class Exception and its subclasses are a form of Throwable that indicates conditions that a reasonable application might want to catch.
The class Exception and any subclasses that are not also subclasses of RuntimeException are checked exceptions. Checked exceptions need to be declared in a method or constructor's throws clause if they can be thrown by the execution of the method or constructor and propagate outside the method or constructor boundary.
Class RuntimeException
RuntimeException is the superclass of those exceptions that can be thrown during the normal operation of the Java Virtual Machine.
RuntimeException and its subclasses are unchecked exceptions. Unchecked exceptions do not need to be declared in a method or constructor's throws clause if they can be thrown by the execution of the method or constructor and propagate outside the method or constructor boundary.
Overriding
An overriding method cannot declare exception types that were not declared in its original. However, it may declare exception types are the same as, or subclass of its original. It needs not declare all the exceptions as its original. It can throw fewer exceptions than the original, but not more.