Question

I want to use a try-catch block to handle two cases: a specific exception, and any other exception. Can I do this? (An example)

try{
    Integer.parseInt(args[1])
}

catch (NumberFormatException e){
    // Catch a number format exception and handle the argument as a string      
}

catch (Exception e){
    // Catch all other exceptions and do something else. In this case
    // we may get an IndexOutOfBoundsException.
    // We specifically don't want to handle NumberFormatException here      
}

Will the NumberFormatException be handled by the bottom block as well?

Answer 1

No, because the more specific exception (NumberFormatException) will be handled in the first catch. It is important to note that if you swap the catches you will get a compilation error, since you MUST specify the more specific exceptions before the more general ones.

It is not your case, but since Java 7 you can group exceptions in catch like:

try {
    // code that can throw exceptions...
} catch ( Exception1 | Exception2 | ExceptionN exc ) {
    // you can handle Exception1, 2 and N in the same way here
} catch ( Exception exc ) {
    // here you handle the rest
}