The Java programming language provides a mechanism known as exceptions (in the glossary) to help programs report and handle errors. When an error occurs, the program throws an exception. What does this mean? It means that the normal flow of the program is interrupted and that the runtime environment attempts to find an exception handlerâ€a block of code that can handle a particular type of error. The exception handler can attempt to recover from the error or, if it determines that the error is unrecoverable, provide a gentle exit from the program.
Here's the general form of these statements:
try {
statement(s)
} catch (exceptiontype name) {
statement(s)
} finally {
statement(s)
}