In Java, there are two types of exceptions:
1. Checked Exceptions
Checked: are the exceptions that are checked at compile time. If some code within a method throws a checked exception, then the method must either handle the exception or it must specify the exception using throws keyword.
For example, consider the following Java program that opens file at location “C:\test\a.txt” and prints the first three lines of it. The program doesn’t compile, because the function main() uses FileReader() and FileReader() throws a checked exception FileNotFoundException. It also uses readLine() and close() methods, and these methods also throw checked exception IOException
import java.io.*;
class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
FileReader file = new FileReader("C:\\test\\a.txt");
BufferedReader fileInput = new BufferedReader(file);
// Print first 3 lines of file "C:\test\a.txt"
for (int counter = 0; counter < 3; counter++)
System.out.println(fileInput.readLine());
fileInput.close();
}
}
Output:
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.RuntimeException: Uncompilable source code - unreported exception java.io.FileNotFoundException; must be caught or declared to be thrown at Main.main(Main.java:5)
To fix the above program, we either need to specify list of exceptions using throws, or we need to use try-catch block. We have used throws in the below program. Since FileNotFoundException is a subclass of IOException, we can just specify IOException in the throws list and make the above program compiler-error-free.
Output: First three lines of file “C:\test\a.txt”
2. Unchecked Exceptions
Unchecked: are the exceptions that are not checked at compiled time. In Java exceptions under Error and RuntimeException classes are unchecked exceptions, everything else under throwable is checked.
Consider the following Java program. It compiles fine, but it throws ArithmeticException when run. The compiler allows it to compile, because ArithmeticException is an unchecked exception.
class Main {
public static void main(String args[]) {
int x = 0;
int y = 10;
int z = y/x;
}
}
Output:
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.ArithmeticException: / by zero at Main.main(Main.java:5) Java Result: 1
3. Should we make our exceptions checked or unchecked?
If a client can reasonably be expected to recover from an exception, make it a checked exception. If a client cannot do anything to recover from the exception, make it an unchecked exception
