Sams Teach Yourself Java™ in 24 Hours, Sixth Edition

Exceptions

Although you are just learning about them now, you have probably become well-acquainted with exceptions during the last 17 previous hours. These errors turn up when you write a Java program that compiles successfully but encounters a problem as it runs.

For example, a common programming mistake is to refer to an element of an array that doesn’t exist, as in the following statements:

String[] greek = { "Alpha", "Beta", "Gamma" };System.out.println(greek[3]);

The String array greek has three elements. Because the first element of an array is numbered 0 rather than 1, the first element is greek[0], the second greek[1], and the third greek[2]. So the statement attempting to display greek[3] is erroneous. The preceding statements compile ...