Comparison of Exception Handling in C++ and Java

Both languages use try, catch and throw keywords for exception handling, and meaning of try, catch and free blocks is also same in both languages. Following are the differences between Java and C++ exception handling.

1) In C++, all types (including primitive and pointer) can be thrown as exception. But in Java only throwable objects (Throwable objects are instances of any subclass of the Throwable class) can be thrown as exception. For example, following type of code works in C++, but similar code doesn’t work in Java.

#include <iostream> using namespace std; int main() {    int x = -1;    // some other stuff      try {       // some other stuff       if( x < 0 )       {          throw x;       }      }    catch (int x ) {       cout << "Exception occurred: thrown value is " << x << endl;    }    getchar();    return 0; } Output: Exception occurred: thrown value is -1 2) In C++, there is a special catch called “catch all” that can catch all kind of exceptions. #include <iostream> using namespace std; int main() {    int x = -1;    char *ptr;         ptr = new char[256];         // some other stuff      try {       // some other stuff       if( x < 0 )       {          throw x;       }            if(ptr == NULL)       {          throw " ptr is NULL ";       }      }    catch (...) // catch all    {       cout << "Exception occurred: exiting "<< endl;       exit(0);    }         getchar();    return 0; } Output: Exception occurred: exiting In Java, for all practical purposes, we can catch Exception object to catch all kind of exceptions. Because, normally we do not catch Throwable(s) other than Exception(s) (which are Errors) catch(Exception e){   ……. } 3) In Java, there is a block called finally that is always executed after the try-catch block. This block can be used to do cleanup work. There is no such block in C++. // creating an exception type class Test extends Exception { } class Main {    public static void main(String args[]) {       try {          throw new Test();       }       catch(Test t) {          System.out.println("Got the Test Exception");       }       finally {          System.out.println("Inside finally block ");       }   } } Output: Got the error Inside finally block 4) In C++, all exceptions are unchecked. In Java, there are two types of exceptions – checked and unchecked. See this for more details on checked vs Unchecked exceptions. 5) In Java, a new keyword throws is used to list exceptions that can be thrown by a function. In C++, there is no throws keyword, the same keyword throw is used for this purpose also.