Android™ How to Program, Second Edition

H.7. Stack Unwinding and Obtaining Information from an Exception Object

When an exception is thrown but not caught in a particular scope, the method-call stack is “unwound,” and an attempt is made to catch the exception in the next outer try block. This process is called stack unwinding. Unwinding the method-call stack means that the method in which the exception was not caught terminates, all local variables in that method go out of scope and control returns to the statement that originally invoked that method. If a try block encloses that statement, an attempt is made to catch the exception. If a try block does not enclose that statement or if the exception is not caught, stack unwinding occurs again. Figure H.4 demonstrates stack unwinding, ...