#852 – How Exceptions Work

An exception is something that happens in your application at run-time that is unexpected and which requires special logic in order for the application to continue executing normally.

Here’s how exceptions work:

• A particular piece of code calls a method, which in turn may call other methods
• The call stack keeps track of the calling sequence that led to the currently executing method
• At any given time, the code that is executing may decide to throw an exception, indicating that something unexpected happened
• The method throwing an exception stops what it’s doing and control returns to the calling method
• The calling method may decide to catch the exception, i.e. execute some code in response to it
• If the calling method doesn’t catch the exception, control continues back up the stack until a method is found that does catch the exception
• If no method catches the exception, it is unhandled