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Summary

A program can use exceptions to indicate that an error occurred. To throw an exception, use the throw statement and provide it with an exception object — a descendant of Throwable — to provide information about the specific error that occurred. A method that throws an uncaught, checked exception must include a throws clause in its declaration.

A program can catch exceptions by using a combination of the try, catch, and finally blocks. The try block identifies a block of code in which an exception can occur. The catch block identifies a block of code, known as an exception handler, that can handle a particular type of exception. The finally block identifies a block of code that cleans up regardless of whether an exception occurred within the try block. The try statement should contain at least one catch block or a finally block and may have multiple catch blocks.

The class of the exception object indicates the type of exception thrown. The exception object can contain further information about the error, including an error message. With the chained exception feature added in 1.4, an exception can point to the exception that caused it, which can in turn point to the exception that caused it, and so on.

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