What's the difference between failure and error in JUnit?

Question

I\'m running JUnit tests on a large code base, and I\'ve been realizing that sometimes I get \"Errors\" while other times I get \"Failures\". What\'s the difference?

Answer 1

Source class : JUnitReportReporter.java

public void generateReport(List xmlSuites, List suites, String defaultOutputDirectory) {
//......

            for (ITestResult tr : (Set) entry.getValue()) {
                TestTag testTag = new TestTag();

                boolean isSuccess = tr.getStatus() == 1;
                if (!(isSuccess)) {
                    if (tr.getThrowable() instanceof AssertionError)
                        ++errors;
                    else {
                        ++failures;
                    }
                }
}

As you can see below line in above method

tr.getThrowable() instanceof AssertionError

errors count is increased when it is instance of AssertionError otherwise(any Throwable) is counted as failures.