Java™ How to Program, Seventh Edition

13.9. printStackTrace, getStackTrace and getMessage

Recall from Section 13.6 that exceptions derive from class Throwable. Class Throwable offers a printStackTrace method that outputs to the standard error stream the stack trace (discussed in Section 13.3). Often, this is helpful in testing and debugging. Class Throwable also provides a getStackTrace method that retrieves stack-trace information that might be printed by printStackTrace. Class Throwable’s getMessage method returns the descriptive string stored in an exception. The example in this section demonstrates these three methods.

Error-Prevention Tip 13.10

An exception that is not caught ...