Difference between Throws and Throw

[Poonam]

Can any body please explain me what is the main difference between throws and throw clauses in java exception handling with example.
I a very confused

[CaptainMorgan]

Taken from the wiki on keywords, which you can read for yourself, I'll just throw out very general examples.

Well first, what is your understanding of basic English? Throw is an irregular verb, while throws is a third person singular verb. More basically:

Quote:

throw a baseball

and

Quote:

how many throws did he commit?

That said, let's apply this concept to the Java language.

Code:

 ...
 if (baseball == strike) {
   throw strikeException;
 }
 ...

respectively, as in the basic English example:

Code:

public static void PitcherMethod throws strikeException {
 ...
}

Hope this helps.

[Poonam]

Hi,
Thankx for reply.
But m not getting completly, not cleared ,when to use throw and throws.
Is it like this:For user define exception we use throw and for inbuilt exception we use throws? m i rit? and also i have read somewhere something like there is some pocess happes like:when we use throw in called method, caller method handle that exception like.., m not sure about it,Please explain me detail functionality if possible.

[tim]

Hello Poonam

Like playing catch with a ball, programming involves trowing and catching exceptions. An exception is normally some problem that needs to be "fixed" by the programmer. But this means that we need to do more work. So here throwing comes in. If you do some logical test and you find that something funny is happening then you can "throw" an Exception instance. For example:

Code:

int a = 1, b = 0;
if (b != 0){
    // cool!
    int c = a / b;
} else {
    // Darn it.
    throw new Exception("Can't devide by zero!");
}

To catch it you use an try-catch block. Look at this method:

Code:

public static void go(){
    try{
        int a = 1, b = 0;
        if (b != 0){
            // cool!
            int c = a / b;
        } else {
            // Darn it.
            throw new Exception("Can't devide by zero!");
        }
    } catch (Exception e) {
        // Gotcha ha!
        System.out.println(e.getMessage());
    }
}

This means that you need to catch and handle the exception. Exceptions are not fun to work with, so you can pass it on the the user of your methods. Although, this is not very nice, but it can speed up your developing time. To "pass on" exceptions to the user of your method, you use the throws keyword:

Code:

public static void go() throws Exception{
    int a = 1, b = 0;
    if (b != 0){
        // cool!
        int c = a / b;
    } else {
        // Darn it.
        throw new Exception("Can't devide by zero!");
    }
}

The problem is that the user of this method must now worry about this:

Code:

try{
    go();
} catch (Exception e) {
    // Gotcha ha!
    System.out.println(e.getMessage());
}

It is possible to keep throwing an Exception, but it is not a very good way to program. The best way to handle exceptions, is as early as possible!

I hope this helped you.

[Cnu]

throws is used to not handle an exception explicitly. we can throw multiple exceptions.
And throw is used handle an exception explicitly.

For ex:

public void service(HttpServletRequest req,HttpServletResponse res)throws ServletException,IOException
{}



public void input()
{
try
{
Scanner c=new Scanner(System.in);
String name=s.nextLine();
int number=s.nextInt();
System.out.println("Name:"+name);
System.out.println("Number:"+number");
}
catch(IOException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
}

[praveena]

More specifically throws specifies what exception your code may throw at runtime
whereas you can throw some kind of exception explicitly at run time...

[Poonam]

Hello All,
Thanks a lot to you all (Specially to tim)
I got it now very well

[tim]

I'm very glad to help Poonam.