Java How to Program, Early Objects, 11th Edition

11.4 When to Use Exception Handling

Exception handling is designed to process synchronous errors, which occur when a statement executes. Common examples we’ll see throughout the book are out-of-range array indices, arithmetic overflow (i.e., a value outside the representable range of values), division by zero, invalid method parameters and thread interruption (as we’ll see in Chapter 23). Exception handling is not designed to process problems associated with asynchronous events (e.g., disk I/O completions, network message arrivals, mouse clicks and keystrokes), which occur in parallel with, and independent of, the program’s flow of control.