Why use IOexception instead of Exception when catching?

Question

I can\'t seem to phrase this correctly for the search engine to pick up any meaningful results.

try{
    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader( new File         


        

Answer 1

FileNotFoundException is an IOException which is an Exception

You are right. But if you catch Exception objects you will catch any exception triggered by your code, not only the FileNotFound exception.

Let's say that your code can throw more than one kind of exception:

try {
    /*
     * Code, code and more code
     */
} catch(ExceptionType1 e) {
        System.err.println("Something went wrong! It is a type 1 exception");
} catch(ExceptionType2 e) {
        System.err.println("Something went wrong! It is a type 2 exception");
} catch(Exception e) {
        System.err.println("Something went wrong! It is not any of the known exception types");
}

Compare the above possibility with this:

try {
    /*
     * Code, code and more code
     */
} catch(Exception e) {
        System.err.println("Something went wrong! Can be exception type 1, 2 or something else");
}

As you can see, differentiating the exception types can help you understand what went wrong in your code.