Why is catch Exception almost always a bad idea?

Answer 1

Well, if at that point you know that an error has occurred, then why not write the proper code to handle that error instead of passing a new Exception object to the catch block? Throwing your own exceptions signifies some design flaws in the project.

I think the bigger point is that if you are catching the Exception superclass, then you have no idea which type of exception is being thrown and will thus not be able to recover from specific problems.

It's almost always better to write this:

try {

InputStream in = new FileInputStream("myfile.txt");

int ch;

while ((ch = in.read()) != -1) {

System.out.print((char) ch);

}

in.close();

} catch (FileNotFoundException ex) {

} catch (IOException ex) {

}

Than it is to write this:

try {

InputStream in = new FileInputStream("myfile.txt");

int ch;

while ((ch = in.read()) != -1) {

System.out.print((char) ch);

}

in.close();

} catch (Exception ex) {

// We have no idea what went wrong here.

}