An exception can be caught and handled using the try...catch statement. (In fact try statements take other forms, as described in other examples about [try...catch...finally](<http://stackoverflow.com/documentation/java/89/exceptions-and-exception-handling/25177/>) and [try-with-resources](<http://stackoverflow.com/documentation/java/89/exceptions-and-exception-handling/1581/>).)

Try-catch with one catch block

The most simple form looks like this:

try {
    doSomething();
} catch (SomeException e) {
    handle(e);
}
// next statement

The behavior of a simple try...catch is as follows:

• The statements in the try block are executed.
• If no exception is thrown by the statements in the try block, then control passes to the next statement after the try...catch.
• If an exception is thrown within the try block.

- The exception object is tested to see if it is an instance of `SomeException` or a subtype.  
- If it is, then the `catch` block will *catch* the exception:
  - The variable `e` is bound to the exception object.
  - The code within the `catch` block is executed.
  - If that code throws an exception, then the newly thrown exception is propagated in place of the original one.
  - Otherwise, control passes to the next statement after the `try...catch`.
- If it is not, the original exception continues to propagate.

Try-catch with multiple catches

A try...catch can also have multiple catch blocks. For example:

try {
    doSomething();
} catch (SomeException e) {
    handleOneWay(e)
} catch (SomeOtherException e) {
    handleAnotherWay(e);
}
// next statement

If there are multiple catch blocks, they are tried one at a time starting with the first one, until a match is found for the exception. The corresponding handler is executed (as above), and then control is passed to the next statement after the try...catch statement. The catch blocks after the one that matches are always skipped, even if the handler code throws an exception.

The “top down” matching strategy has consequences for cases where the exceptions in the catch blocks are not disjoint. For example:

try {
    throw new RuntimeException("test");
} catch (Exception e) {
    System.out.println("Exception");
} catch (RuntimeException e) {
    System.out.println("RuntimeException");
}

This code snippet will output “Exception” rather than “RuntimeException”. Since RuntimeException is a subtype of Exception, the first (more general) catch will be matched. The second (more specific) catch will never be executed.

The lesson to learn from this is that the most specific catch blocks (in terms of the exception types) should appear first, and the most general ones should be last. (Some Java compilers will warn you if a catch can never be executed, but this is not a compilation error.)

Multi-exception catch blocks

Starting with Java SE 7, a single catch block can handle a list of unrelated exceptions. The exception type are listed, separated with a vertical bar (|) symbol. For example:

try {
    doSomething();
} catch (SomeException | SomeOtherException e) {
    handleSomeException(e);
}