Object-Oriented Thought Process, The, Second Edition

Error Handling

It is rare for a class to be written perfectly the first time. In most, if not all, situations, things will go wrong. Any designer who does not plan for problems is courting danger.

Assuming that your code has the ability to detect and trap an error condition, you can handle the error in several different ways: On page 223 of their book Java Primer Plus, Tyma, Torok, and Downing state that there are three basic solutions to handling problems that are detected in a program: fix it, ignore the problem by squelching it, or exit the runtime in some graceful manner. On page 139 of their book Object-Oriented Design in Java, Gilbert and McCarty expand on this theme, but add the choice of throwing an exception:

• Ignore the problem—not a ...