What Does Try/Catch Block Mean?
“Try” and “catch” are keywords that represent the handling of exceptions due to data or coding errors during program execution. A try block is the block of code in which exceptions occur. A catch block catches and handles try block exceptions.
The try/catch statement is used in many programming languages, including C programming language (C++ and C#), Java, JavaScript and Structured Query Language (SQL).
Techopedia Explains Try/Catch Block
Try defines a block of statements that may throw an exception. When a specific type of exception occurs, a catch block catches the exception. If an exception is not handled by try/catch blocks, the exception escalates through the call stack until the exception is caught or an error message is printed by the compiler.
A try/catch block also may be nested with one or more try/catch statements. Each try statement has a matching catch statement to handle the exception. If an exception’s inner try statement does not have a matching catch statement, subsequent try statement catch handlers are checked. This process continues until all inner try statements are checked for a matching catch statement. If a catch statement does not match, the runtime system handles the exception.
Try/catch block examples include:
- A try block followed by a catch block
- A try block followed by one or more catch blocks
- A try block followed by another try block and then followed by a corresponding catch block
