Question

Is there any point catching an out of memory error (java.lang.OutOfMemoryError) in Java?

Answer 1

Yes. Here are a few examples where it could make sense:

• if you want to handle it by gracefully closing your program
• if you want to display the problem to the user or log the error
• depending on your design, you might even be able to clear up memory and restore a working state

However, note that normally (unless you’re at a spot where you’ll be allocating tons of memory at once), you probably wouldn’t specifically catch OutOfMemoryError for these cases, but rather do a catch Throwable all the way at the top in your main entry point.