Exception Handling It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. —Franklin Delano Roosevelt OBJECTIVES O! throw away the worser In this chapter you will learn: part of it, And live the purer with the ■ How exception and error handling works. other half. ■ To use try, throw and catch to detect, indicate and —William Shakespeare handle exceptions, respectively. If they’re running and they ■ To use the finally block to release resources. don’t look where they’re going ■ How stack unwinding enables exceptions not caught in I have to come out from one scope to be caught in another scope. somewhere and catch them. —Jerome David Salinger ■ How stack traces help in debugging. O infinite virtue! com’st thou ■ How exceptions are arranged in an exception-class smiling from the world’s hierarchy. great snare uncaught? ■ To declare new exception classes. —William Shakespeare ■ To create chained exceptions that maintain complete stack-trace information.
Self-Review Exercises 13.1 List five common examples of exceptions. ANS: Memory exhaustion, array index out of bounds, arithmetic overflow, division by ze- ro, invalid method parameters. 13.2 Give several reasons why exception-handling techniques should not be used for conven- tional program control. ANS: (a) Exception handling is designed to handle infrequently occurring situations that often result in program termination, not situations that arise all the time. (b) Flow of control with conventional control structures is generally clearer and more efficient than with exceptions. (c) The “additional” exceptions can get in the way of genuine error-type exceptions. It becomes more difficult for the programmer to keep track of the larger number of exception cases. 13.3 Why are exceptions particularly appropriate for dealing with errors produced by methods of classes in the Java API? ANS: It is unlikely that methods of classes in the Java API could perform error processing that would meet the unique needs of all users. 13.4 What is a “resource leak”? ANS: A “resource leak” occurs when an executing program does not properly release a re- source when it is no longer needed, thus preventing the resource from being reused. 13.5 If no exceptions are thrown in a try block, where does control proceed to, when the try block completes execution? ANS: The catch blocks for that try statement are skipped, and the program resumes exe- cution after the last catch block. If there is a finally block, it is executed first; then the program resumes execution after the finally block. 13.6 Give a key advantage of using catch( Exception exceptionName ). ANS: The form catch( Exception exceptionName ) catches any type of exception thrown in a try block. An advantage is that no thrown Exception can slip by without being caught. The programmer can then decide to handle the exception or possibly rethrow it. 13.7 Should a conventional application catch Error objects? Explain. ANS: Errors are usually serious problems with the underlying Java system; most programs will not want to catch Errors because the program will not be able to recover from such problems. 13.8 What happens if no catch block matches the type of a thrown object? ANS: This causes the search for a match to continue in the next enclosing try statement. If there is a finally block, it will be executed before the exception goes to the next enclosing try statement. If there are no enclosing try statements for which there are matching catch blocks, and the exception is checked, a compilation error occurs. If there are no enclosing try statements for which there are matching catch blocks and the exception is unchecked, a stack trace is printed and the current thread terminates early. 13.9 What happens if several catch blocks match the type of the thrown object? ANS: The first matching catch block after the try block is executed. 13.10 Why would a programmer specify a superclass type as the type in a catch block? ANS: This enables a program to catch related types of exceptions and process them in a uni- form manner. However, it is often useful to process the subclass types individually for more precise exception handling.
13.11 What is the key reason for using finally blocks?
ANS: The finally block is the preferred means for releasing resources to prevent resource leaks. 13.12 What happens when a catch block throws an Exception? ANS: First, control passes to the finally block if there is one. Then the exception will be processed by a catch block (if one exists) associated with an enclosing try block (if one exists). 13.13 What does the statement throw exceptionReference do? ANS: It rethrows the exception for processing by an exception handler of an enclosing try statement, after the finally block of the current try statement executes. 13.14 What happens to a local variable in a try block when that block throws an Exception? ANS: The variable goes out of scope, and the reference count for any object it referenced is decremented. If the reference count becomes zero, the object is marked for garbage collection.
Exercises 13.15 List the various exceptional conditions that have occurred in programs throughout this text so far. List as many additional exceptional conditions as you can. For each of these, describe briefly how a program typically would handle the exception by using the exception-handling techniques discussed in this chapter. Some typical exceptions are division by zero, arithmetic overflow, and ar- ray index out of bounds. ANS: A few examples are: Division by zero - catch the exception, inform user of the attempt to divide by zero. Array subscript out of bounds - catch the exception and print an error message telling the user what index was being referenced incorrectly, and exit the program in a controlled manner. Bad cast - catch the exception and either cast it to the proper type if that can be determined, or print an error message indicating what the bad cast was, and exit the program. Invalid input - catch the exception and inform the user that the input cannot be converted to the proper type. 13.16 Until this chapter, we have found dealing with errors detected by constructors to be a bit awkward. Explain why exception handling is an effective means for dealing with constructor failure. ANS: A thrown exception passes to the outside world the information about the failed con- structor and the responsibility to deal with the failure. Exceptions thrown in con- structors cause objects built as part of the object being constructed to be marked for eventual garbage collection. 13.17 (Catching Exceptions with Superclasses) Use inheritance to create an exception superclass (called ExceptionA) and exception subclasses ExceptionB and ExceptionC, where ExceptionB inher- its from ExceptionA and ExceptionC inherits from ExceptionB. Write a program to demonstrate that the catch block for type ExceptionA catches exceptions of types ExceptionB and ExceptionC. ANS:
1 // Exercise 13.17 Solution: Demo.java
2 // Program demonstrates that the exception 3 // superclass will catch the subclass exceptions. 4 5 public class Demo 6 { 7 public static void main( String args[] )
8 { 9 try // throw ExceptionC 10 { 11 throw new ExceptionC(); 12 } // end try 13 catch ( ExceptionA exception1 ) // catch ExceptionA and subclasses 14 { 15 System.err.println( "First Exception subclass caught. \n" ); 16 } // end catch 17 18 try // throw ExceptionB 19 { 20 throw new ExceptionB(); 21 } // end try 22 catch ( ExceptionA exception2 ) // catch ExceptionA and subclasses 23 { 24 System.err.println( "Second Exception subclass caught. \n" ); 25 } // end try 26 } // end main 27 } // end class Demo 28 29 // exception subclasses 30 class ExceptionA extends Exception 31 { 32 // empty class body 33 } // end class ExceptionA 34 35 class ExceptionB extends ExceptionA 36 { 37 // empty class body 38 } // end class ExceptionB 39 40 class ExceptionC extends ExceptionB 41 { 42 // empty class body 43 } // end class ExceptionC
First Exception subclass caught.
Second Exception subclass caught.
13.18 (Catching Exceptions Using Class Exception) Write a program that demonstrates how vari- ous exceptions are caught with
catch ( Exception exception )
This time, define classes ExceptionA (which inherits from class Exception) and ExceptionB (which inherits from class ExceptionA). In your program, create try blocks that throw exceptions of types ExceptionA, ExceptionB, NullPointerException and IOException. All exceptions should be caught with catch blocks specifying type Exception. ANS:
13.19 (Order of catch Blocks) Write a program that shows that the order of catch blocks is impor- tant. If you try to catch a superclass exception type before a subclass type, the compiler should gen- erate errors. ANS:
1 // Exercise 13.19 Solution: CompileError.java
2 // Program generates a compiler error. 3 import java.io.IOException; 4 5 public class CompileError 6 { 7 public static void main( String args[] ) 8 { 9 try 10 { 11 throw new IOException(); 12 } // end try 13 catch ( Exception exception ) // superclass exception 14 { 15 exception.printStackTrace(); 16 } // end catch 17 catch ( IOException ioException ) // subclass exception 18 { 19 System.err.println( "IOException" ); 20 } // end catch 21 } // end main 22 } // end class CompileError
CompileError.java:17: exception java.io.IOException has already been caught
13.20 (Constructor Failure) Write a program that shows a constructor passing information about constructor failure to an exception handler. Define class SomeException, which throws an Excep- tion in the constructor. Your program should try to create an object of type SomeException and catch the exception that is thrown from the constructor. ANS:
1 // Exercise 13.20 Solution: Demo3.java
2 // Program demonstrates a constructor that throws an exception. 3 4 class SomeClass 5 { 6 // constructor throws exception 7 public SomeClass() throws Exception 8 { 9 throw new Exception(); 10 } // end SomeClass constructor 11 } // end class SomeClass 12 13 public class Demo3 14 { 15 public static void main( String args[] ) 16 { 17 SomeClass testObject; 18 19 try // instantiate SomeException object 20 { 21 testObject = new SomeClass(); 22 } // end try 23 catch ( Exception exception ) 24 { 25 System.out.println( exception.toString() ); 26 } // end catch 27 } // end main 28 } // end class Demo3
java.lang.Exception
13.21 (Rethrowing Exceptions) Write a program that illustrates rethrowing an exception. Define methods someMethod and someMethod2. Method someMethod2 should initially throw an exception. Method someMethod should call someMethod2, catch the exception and rethrow it. Call someMethod from method main, and catch the rethrown exception. Print the stack trace of this exception. ANS:
1 // Exercise 13.21 Solution: Demo4.java
2 // Program demonstrates rethrowing an exception. 3 4 public class Demo4 5 {
7 { 8 try // call someMethod 9 { 10 someMethod(); 11 } // end try 12 catch ( Exception exception ) 13 { 14 System.err.printf( "%s\n\n", exception.getMessage() ); 15 exception.printStackTrace(); 16 } // end try 17 } // end main 18 19 // call someMethod2; rethrow Exceptions back to main 20 public static void someMethod() throws Exception 21 { 22 try // call someMethod2 23 { 24 someMethod2(); 25 } // end try 26 catch ( Exception exception2 ) 27 { 28 throw exception2; // rethrow the Exception 29 } // end catch 30 } // end method someMethod 31 32 // throw Exception back to someMethod 33 public static void someMethod2() throws Exception 34 { 35 throw new Exception( "Exception thrown in someMethod2" ); 36 } // end method someMethod2 37 } // end class Demo4
Exception thrown in someMethod2
java.lang.Exception: Exception thrown in someMethod2
at Demo4.someMethod2(Demo4.java:35) at Demo4.someMethod(Demo4.java:24) at Demo4.main(Demo4.java:10)
13.22 (Catching Exceptions Using Outer Scopes) Write a program showing that a method with its own try block does not have to catch every possible error generated within the try. Some exceptions can slip through to, and be handled in, other scopes. ANS:
1 // Exercise 13.22 Solution: Demo5.java
2 // Program demonstrates rethrowing an exception. 3 4 public class Demo5 5 {
