Try/Catch Block

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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.

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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
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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.