Should You Catch Every Exception or Throwable?

Should You Catch Every Exception or Throwable?

Catching every exception or throwable might seem like a convenient way to handle all errors in your application. However, this practice is generally discouraged.

Why Not Catch Throwable?

Catching Throwable includes Error, which represents unrecoverable system errors such as out-of-memory conditions. These errors require immediate program termination to allow for proper debugging and resolution. Catching and attempting to handle such errors can mask underlying issues and lead to unforeseen bugs.

Specificity is Key

Instead of catching Throwable, it's better to be as specific as possible in your exception handling. Identify the specific exceptions that are likely to occur during the execution of your code and handle them appropriately.

For example, instead of:

try {
    // Some code
} catch(Throwable e) {
    // handle the exception
}

You might catch the following exceptions:

try {
    // Some code
} catch(IOException e) {
    // Handle file I/O errors
} catch (NumberFormatException e) {
    // Handle conversion errors
}

This approach allows you to handle specific errors in a targeted manner, ensuring that your application behaves consistently in the face of exceptions.

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